


The Heat Death of the Universe

by liriodendron



Series: Conductivity [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Established Relationship, M/M, Male Slash, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-02 04:03:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11501385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liriodendron/pseuds/liriodendron
Summary: In which Sherlock Holmes discovers what it's like to wait, John Watson is pretty good at denial, and every shadow has a light source.The conclusion to Conductivity." 'You see it now, don’t you?' Mycroft continues, sounding almost compassionate. 'You must let John move on, accept that no matter how willing you are to be there for him, he may not be able to be there for you. That’s implicit in whatever foolish promises you’ve made to him. And likely the only way you’ll be able to hang on to any part of him at all.'Sherlock lets out a long string of invective, but his heart isn’t in it. The truth of this is undeniable."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> " '...So it was, my dear Watson, that at two o’clock to-day I found myself in my old armchair in my own old room, and only wishing that I could have seen my old friend Watson in the other chair which he has so often adorned.'  
> Such was the remarkable narrative to which I listened on that April evening—a narrative which would have been utterly incredible to me had it not been confirmed by the actual sight of the tall, spare figure and the keen, eager face, which I had never thought to see again. In some manner he had learned of my own sad bereavement, and his sympathy was shown in his manner rather than in his words. 'Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson,' said he." - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Adventure of the Empty House"

Sherlock Holmes isn’t sure at what point he’d decided to plan John Watson’s wedding. He’s not sure he’d really decided at all, in fact. John and Mary seem equally uncertain as to how this developed but show no signs of wishing him to stop, so he forges on. Neither of them seem particularly eager or adept, and Mary’s taste is, to put it mildly, appalling. Best if he handles things.

_Best to keep moving forward, making himself useful, proving himself a friend, proving himself faithful and supportive, making himself into what John needs him to be, even if he does catch John looking at him with concern, studying him a bit too hard when Sherlock presents them with cake options or a linen selection, like he’s trying to see the person he said he didn’t want to be there anymore…_

What matters most is that John is here, in 221B, almost constantly. And if Mary’s here nearly as much, he finds he doesn’t mind it as greatly as he should. Or at least as much as Mycroft snidely implies he should.

Mary isn’t any more normal than John is, although she doesn’t try as hard to pretend that she is. Sherlock hasn’t quite ferreted out what it is about her that doesn’t fit, other than her above-average intelligence and perceptiveness. While he’s come to accept and even enjoy her presence, he finds that thinking too deeply about her, analysing her the way he automatically does to others, is uncomfortable for him.

It makes him think about why she’s in his life at all, why John goes home with her at the end of the night. So he doesn’t, letting himself develop what he can’t deny is an as affectionate a relationship as he’s ever had with anyone other than John, without ever letting his thoughts drift into that dangerous territory that would force him to acknowledge that all is not what he would wish it to be.

_His options are to break his promise to John or to become fiercely, viciously protective of this life, this woman he’s chosen, to the point where no one, not even himself and certainly not John, could ever question his loyalty or his motives, and what kind of choice is that…_

It had started the day John asked him to be his best man. They’d been walking on eggshells around each other since his return, since the terrorism case, no longer sure how exactly to relate to one another and certainly not willing to talk about it anymore. Sherlock was faintly surprised and almost pathetically relieved whenever John turned up, and tried not to show it. He had been so shocked when John broke the unspoken armistice regarding feelings talk he’d iced over completely for a full minute.

_Of course he’d known he was John’s best friend, and more than that even if they’d never found a better word for it, once, but he’d thought that chance had long passed, that he was back in John’s life on sufferance at best, never thought John would rely on him again, would put him in that place of primacy, would say so easily what Sherlock had never let him say before…_

It almost breaks him. Almost destroys the carefully constructed alternate reality in which they are mates and anything else there was to it is only a distant, perhaps fond, memory – if it happened at all. He tamps back those thoughts, locking the door to that room firmly. It works, well enough, and he continues on, smoothly taking over his own duties and then pretty much everyone else’s in his meticulously crafted obsession to ensure complete perfection for John and Mary’s wedding.

John tries to talk to him about it a few times, on cases when Mary’s not around, to check in with him and make sure he’s not putting too much strain on himself. But to allow him to do that would negate the entire point of the work Sherlock has done to shift his thoughts and perspective into this stubbornly platonic dimension, so he dodges and redirects and eventually John stops asking.  

_And John is still all radiance and light, but now it looks like Sherlock is seeing it through a slightly dingy window, looking in on something that no longer belongs to him..._

The only other time he’s nearly jarred out of his controlled and curated role in John’s life is the stag do. If you can call it a “do”, since it’s just the two of them. And John seems to want it that way, even though he’s got, at least by Sherlock’s low standards, loads of male friends.

Sherlock had had a plan to keep this from happening, had taken precautions, knowing that the rooms in his mind palace tended to get rather jumbled when he was too far under the influence and sometimes things escaped that oughtn’t. But it had gone off the rails somewhere, and it wasn’t long before he and John were pissed out of their gourds and piled together like two tired puppies on the stairs up to 221B.

 _The worst part about being sloshed is that it doesn’t make him any less observant, just less functional, he’s perfect aware of every ridiculous thing he’s doing and saying, he’d forgotten how flamboyant he could be when drunk, and he’s touching John too much and what’s worse is John’s touching_ him _too much, or not enough, or is it too much, drunk mates act like this, don’t they, what would a normal chap would do in his place, he draws a blank, and who knows what might have happened if that case hadn’t turned up…_

After that he’d been more careful not to allow himself to become impaired around John and it is, depending on the day, more or less exactly as fine as he tells himself it is. And John seems to trust him more, like he’s passed a test now - or perhaps they both have - and he finally believes they can be in each other’s lives like they had before. Still, Sherlock can’t deny he’ll be relieved when the wedding is over and they can focus on work again. It will be good when things go back to normal. Or at least, this new version of it that they all seem to have been able to agree to let pass for normal, which will have to suffice.

  


On the morning of the wedding he's caught by one of the numerous, nameless bridesmaids in the corridor. "Sherlock, Mary wants you," she chirps as she passes him on some errand of her own. "She's just down there, in that room."

Mystified he obeys, knocking on the door carefully.

"It's fine, I'm decent. Come in!"

Sherlock enters the room warily. Being almost entirely removed from the scope of femininity, to find himself in what is arguably one of the most mysterious places of womankind, the rooms where a bride and her attendants prepare, is disconcerting to say the least. There are far too many ruffles and things with flowers on them and mirrors everywhere. Planning a wedding is one thing, but this is something different entirely.

Mary is sitting in front of a little vanity table, alone, her hair and makeup done perfectly, but still dressed in an oversized button down shirt and ragged shorts.

She grins at his inspection of the room. "Ghastly, isn't it? I suppose this is what event decorators think women like. Still, better than trying to drive here in a wedding dress."

Sherlock shifts awkwardly. He's grown nearly as comfortable with Mary as with John over the past months, but between the venue and the stiffness of his morning dress he can't quite shake the feeling that he shouldn't be here. "You...asked to see me?"

"Oh, yes." She grabs a small wrapped box off the table. "Give this to John, would you? Wedding gift. Not supposed to see each other and all that nonsense."

He takes it from her, tucks it in his suit pocket, and turns to flee, but she stops him.

"Sherlock... would you mind sitting down?"

He freezes for a second and then lowers himself gingerly onto one of the most uncomfortable chairs he's ever encountered, upholstered in a daisy pattern.

_Why did weddings make people want to put flowers all over everything..._

Mary pulls her legs up to her chest and rests her elbows on her knees, scrutinising him. "Sherlock, I wanted to talk to you before the wedding because I think... I suspect this may be a rather difficult day for you."

"Difficult? Well, obviously the logistics required to ensure everything goes smoothly are complex, but I wouldn't exactly qualify it as difficult."

She shakes her head. "That's not what I mean. I think you know what I mean."

"I really don't."

_He really doesn’t, his head is full of menus and seating charts and anecdotes and he hasn’t let himself think of anything else and he’ll be damned if he starts now..._

Mary looks him right in the eye. "So much for delicacy, then. If you don't think I figured out you and John were shagging each other’s brains out before you disappeared, then you're the worst detective in the world."

Sherlock sits bolt upright in stunned disbelief and scans her face, eyes darting back and forth in panic. Her expression is open, matter of fact, no anger or manipulation noticeable. It doesn't make sense.

"Mary, I..." He thinks about denying it, but she's not going to be fooled, not after his first reaction. "How?"

"Aside from every single thing about you two?" Her face hardens just a little bit. "His waking up screaming your name three times a week while you were gone was a hint. Not always in terror.”

He'd never realised. It had never occurred to him that he might be in John's nightmares right alongside Kandahar and explosions and dying children. It had occurred to him even less that there might have been other dreams as well. It hurts and he doesn't know what to say about it so he deflects.

"John doesn't know you know this, does he?"

"If he wanted to discuss it, he'd have told me. But I wanted to clear the air between us, because I've come to consider you a dear friend, Sherlock."

"Why? Shouldn't you consider me a rival? Yet you've encouraged my friendship with John, even for us to spend time alone together. It doesn't make sense."

Mary sighs patiently and shifts so she’s balancing cross-legged on the stool. "Look, Sherlock, when you came back, once John was done being angry, I really thought he might leave me for you. And if that was what was best for him, I would have accepted it. He was so unhappy for so long I just wanted him to have what he needed. But he didn't do that. And why he didn't is between the two of you. But he still needs you, and I know better than to stand in the way of that. I don't want to. You're good for him, and he's safe with you."

"Safe? Our work involves at least one near miss a month, not to mention the weekly bruises, scrapes and other mishaps."

Mary laughs. "If there's one thing I know about John Watson it's that, whether he wants to admit to it or not, he needs danger. He can't live without it, and in its absence he will either find it or make it. I'd prefer he do so in the company of someone smart enough to get him out of it."

"An argument could be made that I am, in fact, the cause of much of the danger John encounters."

"And you are also the only person I trust to do everything necessary to make sure he comes home in one piece, always."

Sherlock studies her carefully. She clearly understands John better than anyone except perhaps himself, and still no sign of deception.

_Well, not quite, as always there’s something there, something wrong, but not about this, his mind wants to slide off of it and he can’t spare the processing power to make himself consider anything else at the moment..._

"You're not concerned about his fidelity?"

"Please," she dismisses. "John Watson is as likely to cheat as you are to set fire to a Stradivarius."

Sherlock has to agree with that. "You should know that if I could think of a way to persuade him to come back, I would do so with little to no thought to your feelings on the matter?"

She smiles. "I'd expect nothing less. And if you could do, I wouldn't deserve him."

Sherlock nods slowly, still trying to make sense of this all. She reaches out and takes his hand, and he does not find her touch disagreeable.

"Sherlock, what I'm trying to say is that I’m grateful, above all things, to know that no matter what happens, John will always have at least one person who loves him as fiercely and completely as I do, and would do anything to protect him. That's the most important thing to me. Do you understand?"

“I don’t love him,” Sherlock says quickly, automatically.

Mary gives him a queer look. “Don’t you? You planned our wedding, you became protective of me once you knew John loved me, you've endured the place of a friend when you wanted so much more. That’s what it is. Doing what is in the best interest of someone, despite personal risk or cost, even if it jeopardises your relationship with them or they are unaware of what you‘re doing or why.”

_She explains it so neatly, like she had once needed to have someone explain it to her and understood where he was coming from, although she seems to be almost a recklessly loving creature by nature, or at least that was what she had extended to him..._

Sherlock tilts his head. "Love...has always been a difficult concept for me to grasp. So often it seems to be the opposite of what you describe. And I've never trusted emotions."

"It's as much actions as feelings," she tells him, standing. "It’s a choice you have to make every day. And I think you've got it down just fine."

He stands too, still baffled. "Thank you," he says because it seems like what someone should say to that. To his great surprise, she goes up on tip-toe and kisses him on the cheek.

"Now, get out so I can finish getting dressed."

Sherlock finds himself on the other side of the door, too distracted by what Mary had just said to pay attention to how he got back into the hall. He feels dazed.

_How had he never been able to understand it before, why had the idea of being in love sounded so ridiculous, so at odds with what he thought about John, how could Mary so simply and frankly have made sense of something he'd got nowhere with for almost five years and suddenly everything is so clear to him..._

He does love John. Of course he loves John. He has always loved John. He will always love John. Often he has been bad at loving John - at least Mary seems to be good at it - but doing what John had asked of him on his return, supporting his marriage, respecting his wishes, that is what loving John means. It makes him a little sad, but it's also, somehow, reassuring.

"I didn't know I knew how to do that," he says to himself, out loud.

A passing member of the catering staff gives him a quizzical look. "What was that, sir?"

Sherlock smiles faintly. "Oh nothing. I think I was just told what I ought to say in my speech. Now, is the organist here? She was supposed to arrive ten minutes ago. Well, if you don't know, find someone does. Hurry up!"

 

 

After the ceremony, the pictures, the luncheon, Sherlock’s nearly disastrous but highly entertaining speech, and the conclusion of the Mayfly Man mystery, John accosts him in the hall. Major Sholto’s care has just been taken over by the paramedics and Mary is trying to soothe the guests, since Sherlock was rubbish at it.

_John looks unhappy, and about more than just his friend nearly dying, Sherlock had made a promise to both him and Mary that there would be no murders at the wedding and had technically kept it, although perhaps this was too close for comfort..._

“Do you need something, John?” he asks, trying to sound as innocently helpful as possible.

John’s brow is furrowed and he glances around, clearly making sure Mary is not in sight. “Yeah, I need you to tell me why the bloody hell you chose today of all days, after everything, to say _that_ to me! In front of everyone!”

“Say what? Oh. Oh, _that_.” Sherlock had been quite chuffed with himself for finally figuring it out. And it had been the one part of his speech, which had involved rather more real-time deduction than even he had planned, that had landed universally well. It’s only now, looking into John’s infuriated face, that he realises given their history, the timing was perhaps less than appropriate.

He shifts awkwardly. “You seemed pleased at the time,” he points out. “Moved, even.”

John takes a long, angry breath, controlling himself. “I _was_ pleased...and moved. And furious.”

“I don’t understand,” Sherlock says, helplessly. “When you asked me to be best man you said the same thing.”

John puts two fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Of course you don’t. Why would it occur to you that if you had managed to come to that conclusion before--”

He stops himself, looking shocked at whatever was on its way out of his mouth. But Sherlock can read it in his stance.

_If you had come to that conclusion before my wedding there might not have been a wedding, you might not have left me in the first place, we might be together yet, I don’t need you dangling the path not taken right in front of me on a day that’s supposed to be happy, be about my future with someone else, when it’s too late…_

John steps back, visibly calming himself.  He closes his eyes. “You know what, I’m sorry Sherlock. You’re right, you didn’t say anything wrong. It was a perfectly normal, lovely thing for a best friend to say at a wedding. You were great. Thank you. Thank you for all of this, it’s amazing.”

Somehow, this is far more alarming than when John was berating him. John’s aura is crackling and flickering, like he’s conflicted.

_Or maybe Sherlock just wants him to be conflicted, it’s all in his head, after all..._

“John, are you sure?”

John nods. “I was being an ungrateful dick. It’s been a stressful day. Really, forget it.”

“I should go tune my violin for the dance,” Sherlock says, not sure how to end a baffling conversation like this.

“Right. Good. I should go… find my wife. See you in there, yeah?”

Sherlock nods and escapes out back to scrounge a cigarette off Janine, who is either too tactful or too self-absorbed to ask him what’s wrong.  

 

 

Aside from that moment of discomfort, the rest of the celebration goes smashingly. It’s rare he’s able to nab a killer and save the victim as well. Though of course John gets credit for the actual lifesaving portion. He’s pleased with how his composition for the Watsons’ first dance had turned out and the guests are suitably admiring of his skill. He’s even managed to charm Janine by, largely, being himself. Albeit a slightly more attentive and extroverted version. Her company is surprisingly tolerable, though he has other reasons to want to be in her good graces.

His vow to John and Mary to always be there for them is sincerely meant, warmly accepted, and not even aided by champagne as one might be tempted to suspect. Even in the moments after he deduces the pregnancy, he’s still pleased, relieved that he’s not been rejected by them as so many had predicted, glad, even, because he knows John has always wanted this.

_But then the picture starts to fade, the one of him and John and Mary and their endless adventures, because now there’s no room for him, no time once there’s a child, no appetite for danger, the truth of his initial words eluding even him until just now, he has been their charge in so many ways, even as he has helped and tried to protect them, but there can’t possibly be space for him in this new life they will now have to build..._

He tries to keep it out of his voice and eyes as he tells them to dance, but Mary’s realised it and seen that he has as well, and it pains her. John hasn’t yet and might not for a long time, might even fight it, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Sherlock had been prepared to sacrifice so much for John, and still would do, but this sacrifice, this kind of rift between them he hadn’t seen coming.

Sherlock leaves the party in the dark, not really sure where he’s going as he’d intended to stay the night at the villa and hasn’t ordered a car. He walks into the warm night until he can no longer hear the music or see the the lights from the dance floor and leans against a tree, fishing the pack of fags he’d nicked from Janine’s handbag out of his coat pocket. Bless her, she smoked like a nineteenth century sailor - high tar, no filter.

He’s on his third when his mobile rings. He ignores it, not even bothering to look. It goes to voicemail but starts ringing again. The fourth time he answers, only for the satisfaction of saying “Sod off!”

“As you prefer,” Mycroft’s ever smooth, ever smug voice comes over the speaker. “But I’ll wager by now you’ve slipped away from the festivities and I’m the only one who’s bothered to check on you. Am I wrong?”

“It seemed best to leave on a high note,” Sherlock replies airily.

“You’re smoking. Oh dear, what happened? No, don’t tell me. Botched the music? Humiliated the bride? Oh…” Mycroft pauses, pondering for a moment. “Sherlock, I am sorry. But it’s for the best.”

“What?” Sherlock demands. “You couldn’t possibly--”

“Eight weeks along, do you think? Well, it was bound to happen eventually. Did you actually think you were going to all live together in some magical harmonious triad, that you wouldn’t be ultimately excluded from their marriage? That she’d let you hang around forever, mooning after her husband and taking up all his time? It had to end some time, a pregnancy merely expedites that.”

_Sherlock is about to reply that it wasn’t like that, Mary wasn’t like that, but he feels the truth of his brother’s words now, it didn’t matter how kind Mary is, how loyal John is, how comfortable they were with his strange friendship, how much they enjoyed detective work, it wouldn’t have gone on forever, even the comfort to his disappointment from losing John that he’d found in their acceptance as a pair didn’t make him part of their marriage, no matter how much they cared for him…_

“You see it now, don’t you?” Mycroft continues, sounding almost compassionate. “You must let him move on, accept that no matter how willing you are to be there for him, he may not be able to be there for you. That’s implicit in whatever foolish promises you’ve made to him. And likely the only way you’ll be allowed in his life at all.”

Sherlock lets out a long string of invective, but his heart isn’t in it. The truth of this is undeniable.

“I do think you shouldn’t be quite so quick to resort to implications regarding my sexual proclivities, Sherlock, given what I know of you,” Mycroft replies mildly. “But I shall give it a pass under the circumstances. You know where to reach me should you require diversion.”

Mycroft rings off and Sherlock puts his head back against the tree and closes his eyes, wishing he could go back to not feeling anything at all.


	2. Chapter 2

John calls when they return from the honeymoon. Canary Islands. Predictable. Boring. Sherlock doesn’t call back. He’s not sure why he doesn’t call back, but is perversely offended that John doesn’t try again. 

It doesn’t matter though. He was already on the track of Charles Augustus Magnussen even before Lady Smallwood came to him with her little problem, and that’s his primary concern. Between keeping Janine on the hook and trying to make sure his drug habit is convincing enough for Magnussen to discount him, he really does have far too much going on to worry about John. 

_ Being with Janine isn’t as bad as he’d thought, he’d been worried she wouldn’t stick around after his refusal to partake in more intimate physical activities but she’s too ambitious for the attentions of a famous, notoriously aromantic man to let that stop her, she doesn’t push it beyond the odd snog, at least not yet, he can see conquest on her mind ultimately, she’s brighter and more entertaining than the average and genuinely likes him, but dear god it’s exhausting, how do regular people do it every day... _

Of course he could have chosen a vice he didn’t actually possess, such as gambling or sex to wreck his reputation with. But he’d dismissed that idea as too much work, since rumours of his history with dependence had long been swirling and he already knew where to get illicit substances and how to do them. He supposes he could have merely hung around drug dens looking disheveled and let people come to their own conclusions without partaking. But that lacked a certain authenticity he feels is needed when conning someone of such expansive resources and high intelligence.

_ It’s definitely not that he’s just like every other junkie who ever lived or is looking to dull some kind of pain or fill some kind of hole in his life, definitely not, certainly not, well, probably not, he knows what he’s doing, anyway the promise not to use was hardly still in effect after everything...  _

Regardless of rationalisations, the very last thing he expects is for John Watson to storm the crack den he’s been crashing in like the rising dawn, like an avenging angel, like a swiss-army human, so utterly and completely useful at the exact right moment that it makes him want to weep. Although that could also just be the MDMA in the mix. 

It’s so wonderful that he’s only a little bit put out that John hadn’t even come there for him. John’s anger when he finds Sherlock, out of his mind on so many different chemicals it’s a wonder they haven’t either killed him or cancelled each other out, is delightful. A spectacular, public blowout is to be infinitely preferred to being ignored, and only adds more credibility to his cover. 

_ At least he can still make John angry, at least John is still afraid for him, he’s dreaded the possibility of finding that John is indifferent, and being on the receiving end of John’s care and devotion, cleverly wrapped up as fury, is like being thawed out by a flamethrower after weeks in ice, painful, terrible, and his only hope… _

It’s so perfect, and the perfect timing to get John engaged right when he needs him, that Molly’s slaps and Mary’s lectures barely register. Mycroft’s discouragement only eggs him on and John’s discomfiture at his relationship with Janine is just the cherry on top. The game is on, John is at his side, and it’s intoxicating enough that he doesn’t even notice the chemical come-down, though he suspects he’ll pay for that later.  

And then it all goes so wrong, so suddenly. His strategy to capture Magnussen should have been flawless.  _ Is _ flawless, but there was a gaping hole in his dataset and as it turns out he’s miscalculated more than one thing. Before he’s even fully assimilated who exactly is holding the gun on him and what it means, he’s fighting for his life.

_ He’s had close scrapes, injuries before, but nothing like this, nothing taking him this close to the literal brink where he can feel his mind scrabbling for purchase on existence, where his body is screaming in agony, where every molecule of him is begging to be released, and then he does die, just for a moment, and part of him wants to stay there but he can’t because John needs him and he mustn’t let John down again... _

He surfaces, perhaps a day later, but knows Mary will run interference to keep him from telling John what he knows until she can figure out what to do about him. She won’t kill him, he’s sure of it. Well, fairly sure. Hasn’t yet, anyway. And John might not be able to believe the truth without more tangible proof than the insistence of drug addict who’s just had a near-death experience. He escapes out the window, which really is a terrible idea but his only option nonetheless, and sets out to provide that proof.

_ And to prove to himself he wasn’t wrong to trust her, at least on the big things like life and death and John, if not on the minor things like reality and identity...    _

The efficiency with which he and John close ranks against a threat, be it a criminal or a reporter or his brother, has always been one of their strongest assets. Sherlock never expected it would come into play against John’s own wife, but the instant John begins to suspect her Sherlock can feel them aligning to each other, shutting her out, leaving no space for anyone or anything that might try to get between them or turn them against each other. 

It is only with difficulty and this preternatural synchronicity that has existed somehow from the day they met that John is persuaded to even listen to Mary’s case, to treat her as a client. To hold off total disavowal at least until they can get Sherlock back to the hospital.

_ He nearly dies twice again on the way, but he’s no longer concerned, he’s got John with him and something to see through to the end, he’s not in danger, not really, whatever the doctors say, although the pain is really quite something... _

“How could you not have known?” John demands later, once Sherlock’s stabilised. Re-stabilised. “You see everything, dissect everyone! You spend more time with her than you do with anyone else but me. How did you miss this?”

Sherlock coughs in his hospital bed and then winces, reaching for the morphine that is apparently not there. “You’ve got to be joking, John. This is cruelty. I’m a very-nearly-dying man!”

“Don’t talk to me about cruelty. The last thing you need - or deserve - is more drugs. They said this little adventure set you back weeks. Maybe if you can’t dull the pain you’ll actually stay in bed this time. Now, answer the question.”

_ How can he possibly answer, say that he couldn’t think about Mary, couldn’t bear to inspect her as he normally would have, it was too painful, and worse, even if she had just been a normal woman he would have found something awful there, because everyone has awful things, and he couldn’t dig without finding something and he couldn’t find something without using it against her, which would be breaking his promise so he’d just left the whole thing alone, for once in his entire life taking someone at face value… _

He settles for, “She’s a very good spy, John.”

John scoffs at that. “You said that somehow I knew it subliminally, just by instinct, but you, genius detective, couldn’t figure it out for four months of close work together. Lie after lie to both of us and you never suspected her, not once?”

_ John looks so devastated, so betrayed, he’s angry but he’s sad too, because for him it’s worse than the person he loves leaving or dying or leaving by pretending to die, it’s discovering that perhaps the person he loves never existed at all and every memory he has of her now rings false… _

Sherlock could have John back. He realises this with a jolt, as John is looking at him pleadingly for an answer. In this moment, in the depths of John’s confusion and heartbreak, in his panic at how close Sherlock had come to death and his rage at who had brought him there, Sherlock could have him back. He could just reach out and John would fall into his arms right now, he’s as sure of it as he’s ever been of anything.  

_ Everything would be right again... _

It would be so easy to do. But John would never forgive himself if he let it end this way. Perhaps if there weren’t a child on the way, it would be different. If Sherlock lets John leave her now, if he encourages the hate and bitterness starting to take root, it will eventually annihilate John from the inside out, drown him with the weight of guilt. It could never be worth it and Sherlock would still lose John, if only to his own self-loathing. And, though he feverently wishes he didn’t, he knows one thing about Mary for certain. 

“No, John,” he says honestly and wishes again for morphine, but suspects it would do little for the sort of pain he’s about to inflict upon himself. “I didn’t, because that’s not what I was looking for. I saw what I was looking for and that made anything past it inconsequential.”

John frowns. “What were you looking for then?”

Sherlock pauses, wondering if he could justify saying anything but the truth right now. “Someone who loves you, John. Someone who would do anything for you.”

_ She really would, Mary’s a liar and a spy, probably a traitor, definitely a killer, with a manipulative and calculating mind, and so very, very much like Sherlock that he wonders how he had ever missed it, so how could she not love John, totally and helplessly... _

“Such as shoot my best friend?” John snaps, but Sherlock can see inside he’s taken aback at this and a little of the wind goes out him. 

“Nevertheless,” Sherlock says, shifting painfully to his side. “That’s what I saw and I didn’t look for more. Does the rest matter, really?”

“Yes!” John exclaims harshly, too quickly. Then, softly, “No. I don’t know. I really don’t.”

He comes closer to Sherlock’s bedside and reaches out to him, putting his hand on Sherlock’s in a way that anyone who didn’t know John Watson quite well would mistake for nothing more than camaraderie.  

_ So close, Sherlock can feel blood pump through skin, faster than it ought to, an implicit question that maybe even John doesn’t realise he’s asking, a last chance to do the wrong thing... _

“You’re not wrong about me,” John admits reluctantly, quietly. “The pair of you. I do seek out chaos and danger. I don’t know who am without it. And maybe I just have to accept that I will never be happy with a quiet life and that the only people who are ever going to love and understand me are lying, conniving, genius sociopaths. But what does that make me?”

“Special?” 

John barks a laugh, then sighs. “Sherlock, what do I do?”

_ No... _

“You go home to the lying, conniving, genius sociopath who is currently carrying your unborn child and you figure it out.” Sherlock’s tone is breezy but he can’t quite keep the regret out of his eyes and wonders if John notices. 

John looks at him in surprise, then nods and removes his hand from Sherlock’s after giving it a grateful squeeze. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. But not yet. I’m not ready to look at her and I might not be for a long time. And I’m certainly not leaving you on your own until I’m satisfied you’re not going haring off again.”

“Very well,” Sherlock said, forcing back his disappointment, the opportunistic thoughts that had come creeping out of the locked cabinets and hidden rooms again the instant he knew Mary for what she was. 

_ Sometimes the things that make us better don’t feel like it at the time, John had told him a lifetime ago in a castle by the sea... _

Sherlock shakes it off, nearly successfully. “What shall we talk about, then?”

John scowls at him. “Well, we could start with how instead of trying some  _ normal _ way to explain the situation you, not 24 hours after being near-fatally shot, climbed out a hospital window to stage an elaborate trap for your shooter. Oh, and you apparently stopped home first to rearrange the furniture and leave out a cryptic but suggestive clue that possibly involved an additional stop-off at Harrods. Let’s talk about how any of that was necessary. Or wise.”

 

 

The office break-in is far from his last miscalculation with Magnussen’s case. It’s not even the one with the most disastrous results. At least, and he never thought this would be something to be glad of, at least he’d gotten John and Mary squared away before publicly and unapologetically committing murder. On tape. 

_ At least John won’t be alone this time... _

The door to his cell being opened, slowly and creakily, is the first sound other than his own breathing that Sherlock has heard in some time. The cell itself is soundproof and escape proof - no windows, no sharp edges, no vents wider than his thumb, no breakable lights or removable ceiling tiles. No bright colours. Nothing that can be used for harm and nothing that would stimulate the brain in the least. Of course, it was designed by a diabolical mind.

Owner of said mind snaps, just outside the door, “I’m only letting you do this because you are perhaps the only person who might be able talk some sense into my baby brother.”

“And because you owe me more than would be decent to mention right now,” John Watson retorts tartly. 

Sherlock smiles to himself. He blames Mycroft, again. Good.  

“Are the shackles really necessary?”

“If you want him to have a chance of getting out of this in any capacity other than horizontal, yes,” Mycroft tells John. “I can’t appear biased. Now, I suggest you stop wasting your time worrying about his comfort and start seeing to his survival.”

At last John appears. He looks drained and strung out, and he lets out a long, uneven breath when he sees Sherlock sitting meditatively on the floor. Or at least as meditatively as one can manage in ankle chains. 

John joins him on the floor, but not too close. Sherlock assumes he’s been warned against touching him and is certain they are being watched, although he’s been unable to locate the CCTV camera. 

“Sherlock…” John begins.

“I assume my brother brought you here to convince me to take his deal,” Sherlock snarls. “Don’t waste your energy. You think he’s being compassionate, but he just wants to use me.”

_ Trust Mycroft to get as much as possible out of his demise, last time he’d gotten half of eastern Europe and now he’s gunning for the rest of it, maybe Russia too if he’s feeling particularly ambitious... _

“Well, actually I was first going to inquire about your well-being and ask you why the  _ hell _ you would possibly do such a goddamn stupid thing as to shoot an unarmed man in front of half of MI-5 and two SO19 teams,” John replies acerbically. “But we can skip ahead if you like.”

“Since when do you complain about my defending you?”

“Since when do you defend me by executing someone in cold blood? Jesus, Sherlock, there’s no way out of this one!”

“You’ve killed for me,” Sherlock says quietly. “More than once.”

“That’s different, you know it is. Your life was in immediate danger and I acted. My conscience is clean.”

_ It is, at least about the times John has killed for Sherlock, and what about Sherlock’s conscience, especially seeing as John is his conscience, does that mean it’s clean too, he hates to think what sort of tarnish would be on his own if he has one, but not from Magnussen, Sherlock had done justice there and if he played judge, jury, and executioner it was only because no one else would... _

“Your life, Mary’s life, your unborn child’s life were under threat. He was more dangerous than if he had been armed and far harder to stop. All it would take from him would have been the wrong word to someone and he could have destroyed all your lives, compromised myself and my brother and potentially the entire government. And he deserved it. You know he’s had people killed before, lots of them, with clean hands and dirty words. He literally set you on fire just to see what I would do. He might as well have been holding a gun to all our heads for the past six months. It’s not different.”

_ All that is true, every word, but what is also true is that when he was standing there, helpless, watching Magnussen humiliate and torment John, a rage like he’d never felt had come over him, righteous and uncompromising, a kind of heat he didn’t know he was capable of generating, and that rage had howled within him that the man before him must not under any circumstances be allowed to live, and is that what it feels like to be John Watson... _

John sighs, frustrated. “There had to have been another choice, Sherlock.”

“There wasn’t. I know I’ve said that before and perhaps I was… wrong… in that case. This time I’m certain there wasn’t. I said I’d protect your family, John, no matter what. It was the only way to do that and be sure.”

John doesn’t try to counter this argument, but his brow is furrowed deeply. 

“Part of that was supposed to be you being around, being  _ with _ us,” he says. “How can you do that when you’re imprisoned or exiled? Or, as I’m sure some members of the government would prefer at this point, quietly assassinated? This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, Sherlock! You said you wouldn’t leave again. You swore you’d always be there.”

“I’m sorry, John,” he whispers, soberly. “In this case I’m afraid keeping that vow in the moment has precluded the possibility of doing so in the future.”

A heavy silence falls between them as the impact of those words land on them both.

At last John clears his throat and says unhappily, “Well, you have a choice now. Take Mycroft’s deal, Sherlock. Please. Either you won’t survive prison or it won’t survive you -  and if you don’t destroy yourself when locked up, someone else will. No matter what you’ll be too much trouble for them to keep alive caged. At least his way you’ve got a chance to have some kind of life, even if it’s far away from us, even if we never see you again. I couldn’t bear it if…” 

He doesn’t finish the sentence. 

_ There’s true anguish in John’s voice at the thought of Sherlock dying, even at the thought of him going away, after all this time since he’s been back Sherlock is still surprised when John lets it slip how much he still needs him... _

Mycroft clearly hasn’t told John his calculations on Sherlock’s likely lifespan should he take the assignment. But John is right - dying on his feet is better than dying in a cell, and at least this way John won’t have to know about it, won’t have to grieve again. They can all pretend Sherlock’s just going off on an new adventure on his own, even if John is the only one who believes it.

“Alright, John,” he agrees and the relief in John’s eyes is worth it. “If you insist.”

 

 

“You leave me once again hoping my calculations of your chances of survival are inaccurate,” Mycroft tells him in the car on the way to the airfield. 

“And what have you  _ calculated _ the chances of that happening twice to be?” Sherlock asks, rhetorically. “Besides, if I do survive this assignment they’ll just set me another and another until the odds finally do get me. And here I’d thought we’d sworn off execution for punishment, as a society.”

Mycroft presses his thin lips together until they nearly disappear. “Give me some credit, please. I’m doing what I can. Should you succeed in your task the crown is prepared to be lenient.”

“But not so lenient as to allow me back on British soil at any point.”

“Unfortunately not.”

Silence for long minutes.

“Did you retrieve what I asked for from the flat?”

After a long, ungracious hesitation, Mycroft hands him an envelope. “Don’t think I can’t guess what’s in there. I don’t know why I agreed to it.”

“Think of it as a last meal request, just, you know, without any actual food,” Sherlock says with artificial cheer. “If I’m going to face certain death I might as well be allowed to face it plastered out of my skull. Not that you’d know anything about either one of those things.”

Mycroft winces, and Sherlock regrets the comment for about a nanosecond. It may be the last time they see each other, but as Mycroft is the one sending him to die it’s probably fair. 

_ He doesn’t really intend to die on this mission, though counting on Mycroft to be wrong again may be foolish, but then what kind of life could he hope to have after it, either, away from London, in hiding forever, those are the sorts of questions he needs chemical assistance not to ask himself right now.. _ .

“Just… if you really must, at least be careful. Please.” Sherlock can see Mycroft isn’t sure whether to feel guiltier about providing his addict brother drugs or effectively signing his death warrant.

“Aren’t I always? No, don’t answer that.” 

They pull up to the waiting jet.

“The Watsons should be here momentarily. Are you sure you wouldn’t like more time with them? I can provide a few moments’ flexibility on the departure time.”

_ He thinks he’s being kind... _

“Quite,” Sherlock answers shortly, getting out of the car. 

His farewell to Mary is affectionate. His farewell to John is nonsensical. 

_ Neither of them say anything of the least importance because what is there left to say, and what would be the use, neither of them can alter the situation or change the past, the best thing he can do is try to make John light up with laughter one last time so he at least has that shiny memory to take with him, so he can tell himself John will be all right, who knows, with Mary looking after him it might even be true... _

Sherlock forestalls any attempt at a hug with an outstretched hand. John looks hurt at first, but then seems to understand. Their facades are both so very thin at this point, they wouldn’t survive it. Sherlock gets in the plane without looking back and that’s that. 


	3. Chapter 3

Only of course, that isn’t that. Thanks to an uncannily well-timed posthumous appearance by dear Jim, he’s almost immediately reprieved and recalled. It’s almost enough to make him wish he hadn’t done a speedball strong enough to drop a circus elephant the instant Mycroft had taken his eyes off him. Then again, hallucinations - thanks to the LSD chaser - come in handy sometimes and he’s got at least a partial answer to the reappearance before he gets back off the plane, with only temporary damage done to his central nervous system. 

_ Temporary, this time... _

It’s little more than an hour between the time Sherlock leaves for permanent exile and his being hauled before the little conclave of Security Service heads who serve as the functional government of the country, regardless what anyone in elected or hereditary office might think they have to say about it. That hour has only marginally sobered him and he makes a bit of a scene, but it doesn’t matter. They’re so afraid of even a ghost Moriarty that granting his absolution requires nearly no convincing. Before he knows it he’s back in the car with Mycroft, wishing he had grabbed more ginger nuts and only half-listening to his brother’s lecture.

“You know you weren’t meant to take those together,” Mycroft is saying sternly. “And certainly not all of them at once. Were you actually trying to kill yourself this time?”

“Not  _ actually _ , no,” Sherlock replies in a bored voice. 

_ Although that really had been too much even for him, he’s not sure why he did it, why he keeps doing it, but whatever the reason lying to Mycroft is always the best option...  _

“I assumed I’d better make what use I could of them before you changed your mind and had them confiscated from me upon landing. Besides, you never really intended to let me spend my life so cheaply and anonymously when I can still be useful here, did you? Good job though, had me fooled.”

Mycroft rolls his eyes. “No, but I had been planning to let you dangle for a few weeks before finding a convenient crisis to return you home. Moriarty, or whoever is acting for him now, rather botched my timeline. How did you know by the way, since you seem unconvinced of any sentimental attachment on my part?”

“The altered video - it’s flawless. Would have taken more time than an afternoon to get that put together, even with the resources at your disposal. You started work on it days ago. Congratulations, brother, you may convince me of your affection yet.” 

“Well, I hope you’ve taken to heart the lesson I was at least attempting to impart.”

“And what lesson would that be?” 

“That there are consequences to your actions, Sherlock.”

Sherlock feigns surprise. “Really? Are you quite sure? Because there don’t seem to be...”

He climbs out of the car, grinning smugly, free as a bird. He does not need to look behind him to know that Mycroft’s fingers are to his temple and he’s working up a migraine.  

_ Escaping death, returning home, and humiliating his brother all in one day, not bad to be getting on with... _

“Thanks for the lift!” he calls back in his most infuriatingly chipper tone, and enters 221 Baker Street with a not-entirely-substance-fueled spring in his step. John and Mary are already inside. 

 

Over the next few months he works like a maniac, even by his standards, and to his continuing surprise John and Mary work with him. Constantly, or as constantly as can be expected when accounting for tedious things like day jobs. Even after the baby comes, despite what Mary refers to as the “deeply sexist biological realities of reproduction” putting her at a temporary disadvantage in the field, they are both still involved, and not just casually. 

It’s everything everyone told him not to expect. Mary is massively useful, particularly when it comes to cryptography and shooting very small things from very far away. John is John, a self-defining necessity for life and work. And the baby is… well, she’s a baby but quite a tolerable one as they go and, most importantly, doesn’t get in the way too much. 

_ He doesn’t understand, keeps waiting for the penny to drop, surely this can’t be sustainable, John and Mary’s interest will wane eventually, it’s only a matter of time, waiting for it to happen only makes him tense and uncertain... _

They are at the Watsons’ house one evening, a concession he’s made reluctantly in the face of the fact that they actually do have a child and can’t literally spend every waking moment in the cramped and occasionally flammable flat with him. He doesn’t like working like this, but on Thursday an assortment of body parts had turned up in different tube station dustbins around the city. Despite a visual inspection that puts them as clearly all belonging to the same man, DNA tests on them have come up as completely different people. So he really doesn’t have a choice about venue if he wants to get anything done.

“Well, John can tell you more on these genetic results than I can when he gets back with the nappies,” Mary says, frowning in thought as she looks over the papers. “But what about a chimaera? When a person absorbs their twin in the womb and parts of their body end up with different DNA. I’ve never heard of it happening with higher level multiples in humans though.”

“It’s never twins. And the tests came back as six people not closely related. And one of them is female.”

“ _ Really _ ? Hmm…” Mary scrunches her face up further in concentration. 

_ He shouldn’t bring it up, shouldn’t keep poking at it and risk throwing things off-kilter, but he can’t bring himself to fully trust that things are going as well as they seem, he’s too often been wrong about the state of relationships before...  _

“Mary, can I just ask you--”

“Oh, yeah, sorry, that mysterious letter Lady Frances got turned out to be in Sui, a rare language spoken by an ethnic minority in Southern China - haven’t found someone to translate yet though.”

“Sui, really? Well, that would support my theory that all of the missing pound notes--” With effort, he stops himself from running down that rabbithole. “I mean, that’s not what I wanted to ask.” 

Something in his tone, probably his extreme awkwardness, alerts her that this isn't about a case and she sets down the papers and looks at him carefully. 

“All right, Sherlock?”

“I wanted to ask… why?”

“Why what?”

He motions broadly at the disaster of papers and photos and other detritus he’s made of their kitchen table. “Why all of this? Solving crimes, late nights, constant danger when you have a small child to look after. This isn’t what people do.”

Mary laughs. “Since when have you ever cared about what  _ people _ do?” 

_ Since what people did started affecting him so greatly, it’s a further part of his discomfort with the situation, to be tied unwillingly to the needs and desires of others, what he’d always avoided until John, and now he’s even more tightly bound to others than he’d ever anticipated... _

Sherlock doesn’t answer, and Mary seems to realise he is serious.

“You’re worried it’s going to stop, aren’t you? That at some point we aren’t going to want to do this with you anymore, that life will get in the way or we’ll decide it’s not worth the risk and you’ll be left alone.”

“Alone is inconsequential. I only ask because I should know if I need to be on the look-out for another assistant in the future,” Sherlock says stiffly, regretting bringing it up at all.  

“Don’t be an arse about it,” she chides.

He gives a grudging half-nod of apology under her stern gaze.

“Sherlock, this  _ is _ our life now. You said it yourself, neither of us can get along like normal people, any more than you can. I suppose at some point along the way, we decided it was better to accept our respective addictions to this lifestyle and do some good instead of driving ourselves mad trying to fit in. Lord knows, I can use the black in my ledger.” Her tone is light but she’s not joking. 

Sherlock frowns, still unsatisfied. “So you work with me for your sins?”

“I work with you, John works with you, because what else could we possibly do with ourselves, after everything? And because, if you insist upon shamelessly fishing for compliments, it is just possible that we actually care an unreasonable amount about you and like having you around.”

Sherlock can’t quite help but soften at that, but his defences remain up.    

Mary sighs theatrically at his expression. “Sherlock, do you really think there’s anyone else on earth who could possibly tolerate any one of us? I mean really tolerate us, day in and day out. Best if we stick together, us three, yeah?”

She leans over and nudges him in the ribs playfully, resting her head on his shoulder for a second. 

_ He’s still surprised when she does this, so few people even try to touch him, he gives off a purposefully impenetrable air, most human contact is unpleasant for him and even those whose touch he allows do not generally do so casually, but Mary just decided to ignore all that at some point, had treated him like they’d been intimate friends for ages from nearly the moment they’d met, and somehow he’s never minded… _

Sherlock smiles back at her, comforted despite himself, just as John walks in with the shopping.

“What’s with you two?” he asks, looking unsettled at the sight of his best friend and his wife grinning fondly at each other. “Been a quadruple homicide, has there then?”

“Sextuple, more like!” Mary tells him enthusiastically, diverting his attention so as not to let him see that Sherlock had been worrying. “Well, maybe. Here, look at these test results…”

“Depraved nutters, both of you,” John mutters, more out of habit than anything else, as he takes the papers, already intrigued.

Sherlock realises one day not long after that, when Mary is whispering the key for a cypher to him over FaceTime so as not to wake Rosie and John is in his chair, as he should be, typing away at the previous case blog, that he wouldn’t change a thing about his life. At least not at the expense of what he has now. 

_ It’s not that he doesn’t still, when he allows those memories to surface, long for John to be really truly his again, and his alone, still wish for that absolute communion between the two of them that sustained him when nothing else could have and that he will never find nor look for again with anyone else… _

But John is well, happy in a way Sherlock had thought John might never be again, had thought he might have destroyed for John forever. He’s present, here with Sherlock, as much as he can be. And somehow despite, or perhaps because of, the minor matter of shooting him in the chest at point blank range, Mary has become an unlooked-for friend. She is filling a place in his life he hadn’t known was empty but now can’t quite imagine without her. 

In addition to this unexpected, almost disconcerting, level of personal contentment, there is plenty of work to do, cases small and large. The unresolved Moriarty mystery hanging over his head is far more exciting than terrifying this time around, given that Moriarty is definitely, despite appearances otherwise, dead. Sherlock hasn’t even thought about getting high since his reprieve - hasn’t needed to. Despite the grounding consistency provided by John and Mary, it’s been anything but boring. 

Although he can’t deny there is the occasional pang, sometime in the past few months the alternate reality in which he has simply been ever John Watson’s friend and comrade has become his only reality. He is keeping his vow and they have done him the great service of allowing him to do so, of making him and keeping him a part of their family for reasons he still cannot fathom, no matter what Mary says.

_ It’s good, actually good, not just him forcing it to be okay for all their sakes, just to keep a promise, it’s a good life, Holmes and Watsons on the case, and far more than he deserves and certainly more than he ever thought he would have, as long as he can keep them close and there’s work to be done there’s little more he could ask for, not without shattering everything again, and there’s a strange kind of peace to that realisation... _

  
  
  
  


When the spectre of Mary’s past surfaces again he’s so confident he can protect her. So arrogantly, blindly, stupidly confident and absolutely positive that it’s all really tied back to Moriarty. Tied back him. So of course he can stop it, and then she’ll be safe - and John and Rosie too. He knows his opponent, he has something to fight for now, and he will do anything necessary to keep it. How could anyone hope to defeat him under such circumstances?

_ Mary had known better, in hindsight, her attempt to bolt, out of which he’d talked her, had been her own last chance gamble to protect her loved ones, if he’d let her go she might have survived, she shouldn’t have trusted him, shouldn’t have let him convince her that he could keep her family safe...  _

It’s his fault, he knows it is. His pride, his baiting of Vivian Norbury, his failure to anticipate what Mary would do. She’s so fast, no one should be that fast. But of course, she’d seen how far over the edge Vivian was, how desperate she was, while Sherlock had still been verbally deconstructing Vivian’s pathetic life for his own satisfaction. Mary had tried to warn him and he wouldn’t stop, and then in an instant, somehow, the bullet with his name on it is buried inside her chest.

_ The last moments go so fast but he will live in them the rest of his life, there’s blood and he’s trying to stop it and then John is there, and why isn’t John doing more, if he isn’t doing more then there’s nothing to be done, and that means she’s dying, and they’re both trying to stay brave and calm for her, an instinctive reaction even before the reality of the situation can be truly comprehended, if it ever can...  _

And then she’s on the floor of the aquarium, unmoving, never to move again. And John is making a low, keening sound that Sherlock thinks is the worst thing he’s ever heard in his life.

_ Was that the sound John had made for him, once… _

Thoughtlessly, reflexively, he moves towards John, and his friend snarls at him like a wounded animal. John will never forgive him, that’s not even a question. Which is perfectly fair, as he will never forgive himself. The only question is if John will survive this, which is the only thing that matters now. The only thing left to care about. 

_ And there are the consequences, little brother, Mycroft doesn’t say to him, not even with his eyes, but he doesn’t need to because when it comes right down to it and he follows all the intertwined threads, when Sherlock had pulled the trigger at Magnussen he’d shot Mary in the heart... _

It hurts, more hurt than he thought he was capable of feeling, hurts down to his bones. Not just because John will never look at him again, not just because Sherlock has failed him, failed them. But because Mary, who should have been nothing more than a roadblock between him and John, had somehow become a part of the fabric of his existence and where she’s now been ripped from it there are too many holes to count. The past year spent with Mary and John has expanded his heart to a degree he doesn’t even realise until it begins collapsing in on itself. 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Sherlock does not spiral blindly back into drug use and addiction after his initial attempts to reach and help John have failed. He walks into it, eyes open, very, very deliberately. He has never in his life lost someone close to him in this manner - death, sudden and violent. Of course he’s seen plenty of death, and much of it violent. And there has been loss. But he’s allowed few people to become close to him in any capacity, and none of them have been pulled away in such an abrupt, horrific, and utterly final way.

He has no coping skills for this, whatsoever. The fact that he is to blame for it leaves him further unable to process the experience and with even less of a desire to allow any thoughts or feelings on the matter through without a significant buffer. The pain is too great and he’s reaching the limit of what even the vast resources of his brain can keep under lock and key.

_ There are rooms for this in his mind palace, but Mary refuses to stay in them, she comes creeping into his thoughts quietly at unexpected moments, bringing with her the shameful memory of his hubris, the smell of gunpowder and heartsblood, the sound of John’s howls...  _

So he offers the use of his kitchen to Bill Wiggins. The one promise he won’t break ever, because it had cost John too much to extract it from him, is that he won’t kill himself. If he’s going to go on a bender, particularly one of the depth and variety that he intends, he needs a chemist good enough to prevent an acute fatal overdose. Normally he would count on himself for that, but he plans to be far too blitzed to be by any means reliable. 

Sherlock is pointlessly, fruitlessly, despairingly high for a full week. No combination or potency seems to do more than take the edge off, not enough to fully stop him thinking about Mary’s death, John’s agony, his culpability. He also doesn’t sleep for a full week - apparently introducing meth into the rotation of someone who already only sleeps three hours a night does not improve the situation. And perhaps, as he later finds out he’s apparently completely hallucinated an entire person and night-long conversation, they may have gone a wee bit heavy on the mescaline. 

_ Nothing he takes does anything for what he’s feeling, not really, just brief moments of distraction, nothing helps his mind wrap itself around what has happened, around what he’s done, just when he’d thought he couldn’t hurt John Watson any more, just when he thought they were all finally safe, at least for a given value of safe, that they’d all found a way to live...  _

Hallucination or not, the case of Faith Smith and his conversation with her on the topic of suicide - something he’s not yet prepared to admit he’s smack in the middle of doing regardless of his protestations - sparks something in him. John is falling, John is alone. John might not survive this time. Whether or not John will see him, Sherlock plunging into his own lonely, mindless darkness will not save him. And if he can’t save John, what was the point of any of it?

That doesn’t mean he lays off. Aside from the fact that he’s nowhere near ready to face the world again without a protective swath of mind-altering chemicals, self-destructiveness is, perhaps too conveniently, integral to what he needs to do. It takes him a week to formulate a plan and two more to put it all into action. As one of his more intricate and impressive works of prediction and coordination, he really is quite pleased with his efforts, particularly since he managed it without being sober for a single moment during the entire process. 

_ Particularly the timing with John’s therapist’s office, that had turned out beautifully, always reassuring to know that, even off his tits, he can still predict the actions of everyone in his life with a high degree of accuracy, provoke the exact responses he wants, almost down to the second... _

Although he’s made one or two small errors in his pursuit of Culverton Smith, the plan really comes off amazingly well. In the morgue at the hospital Sherlock is confident he’s got Smith on the back foot and John, if not forgiving, is at least present and engaged instead of entombed in grief. It’s a start. 

Then Sherlock discovers he has nothing, that he never met Faith Smith, and between that and Mary and everything he’s taken that day, that week, that month, he truly, genuinely loses it. Not just to stir John to empathy or action, but completely and totally goes out of his mind, endangering the whole scheme. Sherlock can feel his chance at bringing John back slipping away right along with his own lucidity.

And then John snaps. Really snaps, worse than Sherlock has ever seen before in any situation, and now turned on himself. Somehow, that fact alone, the fact of John’s hands on him in unrestrained wrath, brings him back. 

_ John is savage, out of control in the way that Sherlock has so often loved but right now hates because it means he’s in too much pain to care, and completely, absolutely dark, darker than just the absence of illumination, he’s gone past that and out the other side to a place of negative light and it’s terrifying, because for once there’s nothing underneath the violence, not love or fear or concern, but complete and utter empty rage… _

John has never beaten him before, not like this. They’ve come to blows of course, but always on equal footing. He’s driven John to violence before too, both on his behalf and occasionally on his person, but it has always been well justified. It’s justified this time too, perhaps more than ever before, and Sherlock doesn’t try to fight back. Not that he’s healthy enough to do, anyway.

_ And perhaps he’s just a little bit pleased that after all his careful engineering, he still can’t quite predict John’s every move after all...  _

For a moment the only thing Sherlock can think is that every other time John has raised a hand to him, in anger or in passion, he must have been holding back. But even now, even coming at full force from this dark place of resentment, he still prefers a beating from John Watson to anyone else’s embrace. They pull John off him when he starts kicking Sherlock in the stomach, and by that point even he looks unnerved by how far he’s gone. 

_ Maybe they should have let John keep going, let him scream and pummell and get it out if he can, and maybe Sherlock wouldn’t survive it but it’s no more than John’s due, and if Sherlock’s going to die by anyone’s hand, in the curious intimacy of violence, he’d have it be John’s... _

“It’s alright, let him do what he wants,” Sherlock tells them with difficulty, keeping his eyes fixed on John’s. “I killed his wife.”

John’s face grows cold and hard now against the tears that have sprung up there. “Yes, you did,” he agrees, and looks away.

For once, complete and total honesty between them only makes it worse.

_ John… _

Sherlock mercifully loses consciousness. 

  
  


Although one of Sherlock’s contingencies had certainly involved ending up in a room in Smith’s hospital, he hadn’t exactly planned for John to be the one to put him there. Not that it would have taken much to do it in any case, the state he’s in. He’s feeling less confident that John will, in fact, come in to rescue him at the last moment, but he’s arranged it so capturing Smith doesn’t require him to. And he’s minimised actual risk to himself with a few pieces of insurance. 

What he doesn’t expect is for Smith to make him repeat out loud that he doesn’t want to die. And even less to find that he means it.  

_ He’s told himself that the perpetual state of near-OD he’s kept himself in since Mary’s death was, at least for most of the time, about making sure John believed he was really in danger, that he wasn’t just using it as a way to commit slow-motion suicide without having to admit he was breaking his promise, but of course it’s not true and he’s known it all the while, he has wanted to die but he doesn’t now, he just wants to see John again… _

What he also doesn’t expect is for Smith to actually get his hands dirty and try to suffocate him when the IV is taking too long. Or for his body, having been abused and strained in every way possible and having been denied proper food for he doesn’t even remember how long, to not even be up to the task of fighting off a small, old little toad of a man like Culverton Smith.

The truth, which he will never admit to anyone, least of all John, is that he is dying, for real, unable to stop it, when John kicks the door in and saves him. Saves them both, really. And even though John is still furious, his fear and Sherlock’s showmanship - which infuriates him but that he’s never been able to resist - break down something in him. Once John calls Sherlock a cock, Sherlock knows he’s out of immediate danger.

John does stay with Sherlock a little while in the hospital, making sure he’s treated properly for the near-systemic organ failure he’s been flirting with for days. He doesn’t say much until right before he leaves.

“Sherlock… I’m sorry,” he says, not meeting Sherlock’s eyes. “I shouldn’t have laid into you like that. I was trying to stop you from hurting Smith and then I was just so, so angry at you, for everything, for Mary and bringing me here and being wrong and being high...and I couldn’t stop. Or maybe I could and just didn’t want to. I don’t know, honestly, but either way it’s no excuse.” 

Sherlock doesn’t reject the apology, because he’s learned it’s something John needs to do. “It was… extenuating circumstances, I think?” he offers instead. 

John shakes his head, looking down at his ripped and swollen knuckles from where he had struck Sherlock over and over. 

_ There had been a time when they’d not gone a day without leaving some kind of mark on the other’s body, possessive, territorial, proud to wear the signs of the other’s ownership on their skins, but this wasn’t that... _

“No, it was more than that, for a moment there I really wanted to--” John cuts off, flexing his fingers painfully. He closes his eyes. “I could have seriously hurt you, Sherlock. I was out of control and I didn’t even care. I promised myself I’d never let that monster out again, especially on you, and I broke that promise. I might have killed you if they hadn’t stopped me.”

Sherlock pauses for a long moment, wondering if what he wants to say is Not Good and whether he should say it anyway. 

“John… I know in the past you’ve said that I saved you. I fear that since then the amount of pain and destruction I’ve brought into your life may have outweighed anything else I have done for you. But what is incontrovertible is that you have saved my life in every possible way, many times. And you keep on saving it. As far as I’m concerned at this point, you can do what you like with it.”

John stares at him in mild disbelief. “You know, most people would have gone with reassuring me that I never would have gone that far, that I’m a good person, etcetera, etcetera, instead of just telling me they’re fine with it if I do kill them,” he points out slowly. 

_ So definitely Not Good then, but John doesn’t look angry... _

“You  _ are  _ a good person,” Sherlock says vehemently. “I’ve never known a better one.”

John looks away. “Given the people you know, I’m not sure that’s a high bar to reach. And no matter the circumstances, what I did was not okay.”

Sherlock struggles to sit up in bed. “John, what, precisely, about the last month  _ has _ been okay?”

He can see John take his point and absorb it, loosening his shoulders just a bit and finally looking back at Sherlock. He nods reluctantly.

_ John will still rake himself over the coals for this, but perhaps less so if he can keep that in mind... _

  
  


John leaves soon after that, but is waiting for him in 221B when he is released the next day. He’s  still furious at Sherlock. But not so furious he won’t babysit him during withdrawal. And not so furious that he won’t, at least under extreme prodding, talk. 

He almost doesn’t. He almost leaves with the polite, angry distance still between them, so much unsaid, so much hidden from Sherlock’s view. 

But in the end, whatever moves him to do it, he does talk to Sherlock. It’s messy and it’s painful and it’s difficult. They both miss Mary, they both have regrets, and there’s plenty of guilt and blame to go around. And John is holding on to more than Sherlock could have guessed, though he really oughtn’t be so hard on himself. But it does, finally clear the air between them.  

_ And for some reason John is pushing Sherlock into the arms of Irene Adler, even though he knows it’s not like that, telling Sherlock that he shouldn’t let the opportunity go by if someone cares about him, and Sherlock doesn’t understand why he’s doing that, perhaps to alleviate his own conscience, but there are bigger things to worry about, and texting isn’t a relationship no matter how badly John feels about it.. _ .

John’s confession seems to have let loose something inside him. All of a sudden, he puts a hand over his eyes and begins to weep, a candle stub guttering just on the edge of going out, and Sherlock simply can't take it anymore. He's across the room before he's even consciously made the decision to get up. He puts his arms around John gingerly, in a way that he hopes is the way that one would hold a friend to comfort him.

_ How do you hold a friend, he doesn't know for anyone and least of all for John, it’s not how he would hold someone whose body had fitted to his so many times that he at one point had stopped believing there was any difference between them, not how he would hold someone he had once possessed and who had possessed him... _

He tries, putting a hand on John's neck and his other arm around his shoulder. Close but not too close. 

"It's okay," he tells John.

_ Why had he said that, he's never spouted that sort of comforting nonsense before, never understood why people did, but now he does, now he feels more helpless than he ever has before and the words just tumble out... _

"No, it's not," John whispers, tears falling freely onto Sherlock's best dressing gown.

"No. But it is what it is." Sherlock repeats his earlier words back to him, not knowing what else to say.  

Somehow that helps, minutely. John nods and after a few moments sort of melts into Sherlock's arms, still sobbing but no longer so stiff he might shatter. 

Holding John like this, his body warm but too dark, is a kind of torture for Sherlock. He stays perfectly still, not trusting himself to stay within the bounds of platonic affection otherwise. This is made even more difficult when John turns his head and rests it against Sherlock's chest, nuzzling against him so slightly that Sherlock wonders if he's imagining it. 

He knows he's not imagining it when John slips his arms around Sherlock's waist and puts his nose to Sherlock's sternum.

_ Sherlock feels the wrongness, the sense of betrayal, the too-soon-ness of it,  _ _ he's thought about this, of course he has, Mary wasn't even cold before part of Sherlock's mind was calculating if and how John might want him again, even though John might not ever have forgiven Sherlock for her death, even though Sherlock can recognize how massively Not Good that is, but  _ _ Mary wouldn't have wanted John to suffer for even a second after she was gone, she’d all but willed him to Sherlock, she'd have wanted anything for him that could relieve him, wouldn't she, or is he just trying to excuse the behaviour because he wants it so desperately... _

"John," he says in a strangled voice, willing his body to pull away. It doesn't. 

John reaches up and puts a hand on the back of Sherlock’s neck, working fingers into his hair.  Sherlock is unable to stop himself from leaning into the caress, so hungry for the affection he can barely spare the energy to feel guilty. John looks up at him with red, swollen eyes and a grave expression. He tilts his head and rises on his toes and before Sherlock quite knows what is happening, John is kissing him softly, needily.

_ The inside of Sherlock’s head explodes, the sense-memories he’s been keeping in locked rooms and closed books tumbling out all at once and submersing him in a wave of pure longing, electrifying his brain, his whole body, a flashbang obliterating all other thought, John is too dark still but feels like an ember in his arms, getting warmer and stronger with each second and Sherlock wants nothing more than to smolder with him, but he can’t, he has to stop it… _

He breaks away, not as quickly as he should have. “John…” he croaks. “You’re confused right now. You might regret…things.”

John exhales loudly, stumbling over his words. “You’re right. I’m not in my right mind, I’m as emotionally vulnerable as they come, and I’m in no condition to be making any decisions.” He brings his face back to Sherlock’s so they are just inches apart and Sherlock can feel John’s breath hot on his face as he whispers fiercely. 

“I don’t care. I just...I need something true, something real. Everything feels false, like it’s all just shadows and smoke. I think this is the only thing that can keep me from going completely insane right now… I can’t make you promises, I can’t even imagine any future at all right now. I might regret it. I might hate you for it. I might hate me for it. I might never want to see you again. But I still want to be with you again, at least this one time. Please.”

_ Now he understands, John had been hopelessly trying to revise history, trying to rewrite their lives and sexualities so he didn’t do this very thing, setting the Woman as a bulwark against his desire, a last-ditch effort to safeguard the memory of his relationship with Mary, to make Sherlock not a threat to that, but now that pretense has crumbled in the face of his grief and need… _

John’s eyes are wide and desperate and Sherlock hates himself for making John beg for anything, even if what he’s asking is for Sherlock to take advantage in a way John might never forgive him for.

"This is selfish, I know it is. I don’t know what I’ll feel tomorrow.  All I know is that I want you now and I don't care about anything else. Will you be with me, Sherlock? Even knowing that?"

_ How can he deny John anything, especially this, and he has to respect John’s wishes, trust that even now he knows what’s best for himself, but Sherlock’s selfish too and he can’t distinguish, what will hurt John more, withholding or giving in, suddenly it seems like too much work to reason… _

“Yes, John,” Sherlock swallows.

He puts his hands to John’s head and pulls him back, rougher than he intends, covering the dry, salty lips with his own, tasting John again, feeling him surrender beneath his mouth. He holds John with firm hands on the small of his back. The taste of his lips, his saliva for only the second time in four years does something to Sherlock's brain, as if the unique combination of proteins and amino acids contained therein are slotting themselves into receptors designed specifically for them. A designer drug for him alone.

_ It's the same effect as taking a cocktail of all the recreational substances he’s ever tried after years of sobriety, and he would know… _

He wants to lose himself to it, finally be able to abandon his restraint entirely and plunge into thoughtless sensation and lust. But that’s not what this is about, and John feels fragile, breakable under his hands, in a way that he never has before. He’s always been so solid, so sturdy, so real – one of his primary attractions. Now he feels hollowed out and ephemeral like the flame of a match. Sherlock reins himself in.

_ Slowly, gently, not too fast, not too much, John is broken, John is hurting, this might be the last time to be with him ever, savour it, don't rush it, don't sour it by wanting more than he can give, it's time to give to him now, whatever he wants, whatever he needs... _

Sherlock remembers, in razor sharp clarity what John likes, what made him the happiest that Sherlock would do for him. He breaks away and takes both of John's hands, walking backward towards the bathroom and leading John with him.

“Wait,” John says with obvious effort. Fear shoots through Sherlock that he’s changed his mind, but instead John just fumbles for his phone. “Molly.’

Of course. She’d been due to come over next to watch him while he detoxed. He nods, relieved that one of them remembered. John texts her and then drops his phone on the table with a heavy sigh.

"I don't want to think about things any more," John tells him, his brow furrowed and cloudy. "I don't want to think at all."

"Focus on me. Don't think of anything else."

John nods, a little uncertainly, and lets Sherlock take him into the bathroom. Sherlock turns on the shower and John sits on the edge of the tub. As steam fills the room, Sherlock kneels in front him and presses his lips to John's again, holding his shoulders and slowly, carefully, slipping his tongue into John's mouth. John begins to respond, sliding his tongue back over Sherlock's almost dreamily, tentatively running it over Sherlock's teeth before working it inside his mouth so subtly it almost feels like a part of him that’s been missing.

_ He'd forgotten how profound this is, this mutual opening to one another, the perfectly equal exchange of sensation and fluid, it's harder to lie in a kiss, at least one like this and there'd been so few like this, kissing Janine hadn't been unpleasant, but it was never real, at least for him, it was playacting, but this is complete relinquishment of self... _

Eventually, they pull back and just look at each other. John's face is calmer now, but still somber. Sherlock puts his hand to the side of John's face, cupping it. "John, if at any point you want me to stop..."

"No. No, promise me you won't stop."

In answer, Sherlock begins to undress him very deliberately. It feels like a sacred moment, or at least like how they've been described to him. He moves forward so he's kneeling between John's legs, slips off his jacket, unbuttons his shirt and then works off his undershirt, leaning in to kiss John's shoulder, his collarbone, the top of his sternum at they are exposed and resting his hands on John’s waist. Even kneeling he is taller than John sitting. The steam from the shower is so thick now that even this close John's body seems shrouded in mystery, his haggard face wreathed in fog as he blinks up at Sherlock.

_ He's glowing again, so faintly you might miss it, and it’s a subdued glow, like bioluminescence on the sea at night, but it's there again at last and Sherlock wants nothing more than to make it grow stronger... _

Sherlock works his fingers under the waist of John's trousers, pausing to fondle hipbones and run his hands over the smooth curve of buttocks, before he pulls John back to his feet and takes them off of him. Suddenly, John Watson is once again naked before him, small, strong, scarred, perfect. He'd almost forgotten, or at least tried to. Sherlock drinks in the whole of his body, a parched man, soaking in the familiar and cataloguing the changes.

_ New freckles, leg muscles more defined, hands softer, thinner in the way one is thin after gaining and losing a small amount of weight and then not eating properly for weeks, skin sallow, small scar on arm, sandy hair longer on the top, more stylish but grayer... _

But mostly it is so overwhelmingly familiar, his shape and his scars and the straight, self-contained way he holds himself, accepting Sherlock's inspection as he always has. He's aroused, and the moisture in the air has settled on the golden hair of his chest and is glittering like diamonds. His cobalt eyes are intense, but patient and unreadable. Unable to resist, Sherlock leans down to taste the water on his chest, licking up shamelessly from his ribcage to the side of his neck, behind his ear, and then taking John’s earlobe gently in his teeth.

John makes a nearly undetectable noise of enjoyment, his skin puckering visibly at the sensation, and pulls Sherlock to him, as if he can't bear to be separated by any space at all for another moment. He buries his face in the hollow of Sherlock's throat and slowly begins to unbutton Sherlock's shirt, eyes closed against him as he works. 

There’s a stillness to this moment, John pressed naked into him, his hardness nearly between Sherlock's clothed thighs as John bares his chest and they are at last skin to skin. Sherlock lips at John’s hairline as John pulls his shirt the rest of the way off, and they stand there, John's head still bowed, embracing each other.

_ It's indescribable, he can't even find words to explain it to himself, the deep intimacy of this moment, it's relief and dread and pain and joy and guilt and it's all so intense that it somehow hurts, as if the intensity is making it impossible to tell what all the other feelings are except fear that it will end and never return and he would stay like this with John the rest of his life if it meant he could be sure not to ever be without him again... _

Sherlock's not sure how long it is before John kisses him under his chin and lets him go, climbing into the shower and drawing the curtain. Sherlock breathes a long, unsteady sigh and finds his heart is racing. He quickly strips the rest of the way and follows John, finding him standing under the too-hot spray, eyes closed and face upturned.

He comes up behind John and puts his arms around his chest. John curves back into him, aligning their bodies, hot and wet and trusting. Sherlock is throbbing against the small of John's back, to a point that's almost painful, but he doesn't try to ease it. He masters the feral, on-the-edge desire, keeping himself there like a walker on a tightrope. 

Sherlock runs his hands up and down the front of John's body, trying to read his thoughts by touch as he used to, to re-memorize pectorals and nipples and abdomen and clavicle. John is clay in his hands, yielding to every touch. He nibbles at the nape of John's neck as he caresses the outside of John's thighs, tracing the lines of his ilia and resting his hands at last on John's stomach, going no further just now.

_ He wants to stay in this delicious suspense, draw it out, feel every step in brilliant clarity, every kiss and touch and breath on skin and skin on skin and imprint them all on the inside of his skull so he can’t ever erase them...  _

Sherlock isn’t sure what moves him to do this, but he picks up a bottle of shampoo and squeezes a bit into his palm. Keeping one arm around his friend, he starts working it into John's hair, massaging his scalp with dexterous fingers. Apparently this is the right thing to do, as John leans his head into Sherlock's hand, pushing back against him in obvious satisfaction.

"Mmmm," the low sound of contented pleasure is so familiar, so natural that it almost startles Sherlock, but he recovers quickly and doesn't stop working his hands through John’s hair.

"Tilt back," he whispers, and rinses the soap out meticulously. John's eyes are still closed but he looks, if not happy, at least like he's not thinking about anything anymore.

When Sherlock is finished he kisses along the curve of John’s neck and releases him. John turns to face him and he looks younger suddenly, not quite as careworn. No one would confuse him for the man Sherlock had first met, but he looks like himself, not a shell of what he used to be.

John stands quite close to Sherlock as the water beats on his back and puts a hand to Sherlock’s chest, right in the centre. The scar from the bullet wound is a white-lined knot of anger, although it rarely pains him. 

John’s fingers wander across Sherlock's body, his chest, his arms, his back, feeling out every injury and scar that Sherlock hadn't had the last time they were together, reading the story of Sherlock's time in exile, the fights, the torture, the losses. He lingers on the three knots on Sherlock's back, signs of his final, nearly fatal beating before his return from the dead, and then presses both hands again over the bullet wound just one half inch to the right of his heart.

"I don't know what I would have done," he tells Sherlock, shaking his head. "Losing you again."

Sherlock is disturbed to see him slipping back into darkness. He puts his hands over John's. "You would have done what you did before, you'd have moved on, you'd have been fine."

"No. Not again I wouldn't have. I never really moved on the first time, I was never fine, and then having you back and... even if I didn't  _ have _ you... It would have stopped my heart, Sherlock."

Sherlock does him the honour of believing him this time. "It didn't happen. And it's not going to." 

He leans over and takes John's mouth to reassure him, and it's more passionate than gentle this time, the little injection of fear making them both bolder. John grabs Sherlock's arse and drags him close, working it with the fingers of one hand just enough to bring a tingle of pleasure to life deep in Sherlock's gut, before he reaches between them with the other and starts stroking Sherlock firmly.

_ He almost can't take it, being touched like this, he's going to come, he's going to dissolve, a body can hardly contain this much pleasure, how had he managed to do this regularly with this man for a year and a half and not die of it, was it always this good or has he just been starved, he's even stopped masturbating because it only brought up memories, at best a sad and pallid mimicry of what they’d had, but now he's here again and it's somehow better than it ever was... _

He stops John before he reaches the point of no return, his nerves shrieking at him, but wanting desperately to put John first, to take care of him as he'd promised himself to do. He is surprised to discover that his need to do that is greater than his need for his own gratification. No longer afraid of going too fast for John, he pushes him back firmly against the slick tile wall and gets to his knees before him. He looks up at from his pose of submission and hopes John can tell what he's trying to do.

_ He feels truly penitent, for everything, every way he's ever hurt John, for making the choice to leave him, to die, to destroy them, sending John down a path that ended in more heartbreak, for not being able to save Mary, and he'll spend the rest of his life making it up in whatever way John can accept, he doesn't know how to say it but maybe he can communicate like this, how they used to, let John know that he will put him first till the end of his days... _

John's expression of concentrated lust flickers just for a moment, and his body language shifts into acceptance. Somehow, he understands.

Sherlock takes John in his hand, feeling the weight, the length, the immoveable strength of him. He keeps a firm hold as he puts his head forward and noses his way between John's legs. He licks the inside of John's thigh as he nuzzles into John's slightly reddish pubic hair, seeking the essential scent of him again, the smell of musk and overheated air and wool and exotic spices. Water is streaming down his face, dripping from his hair and getting in his eyes, but he ignores it, pushing deeper to John's secret places, too long unexplored.

He traces the curves of John testes with his tongue and then tilts his head up to lick lavishly along John's perineum and up as far as he can reach, growling happily when he hears John gasp. At last he withdraws from his investigations. He wraps his hand around John's base and gently laps at his tip, flicking his tongue against the slit before plunging John's cock deep into his mouth, more than part way down his throat. He works his throat muscles against it, moving his head and neck just so for maximum titillation and running his tongue around John's root.

_ Restricting the gag reflex is a simple matter, he can see John's forgotten he knows how to do that, John's watching him, and he's watching John watch him, it would feel almost like an out of body experience except it's anything but, it's all about the body, John's body rigid with anticipation, humming inside of himself, Sherlock’s body completely given over in service to John's... _

John tangles a hand in Sherlock’s hair to steady himself as he bucks into Sherlock’s mouth, growing even harder.  Sherlock rewards John by taking him in even deeper, so deep he feels overflowing with him. John’s mouth is open, a slice of ripe pomegranate against the paleness of his skin, and he’s panting in short, tight breaths.

It’s not long until he can see it start in John's eyes, and he watches him, hawk-like, wanting to burn it into his own retinas. John pupils constrict, then dilate suddenly as his eyes go glassy and far away at the same time and Sherlock feels a last sharp thrust and the warm, viscous fluid spilling out at the back of his throat. He doesn't break John's gaze as he slowly pulls back, holding his mouth around him for the last trembling seconds and then swallowing.

_ John’s bright again, as bright as a nuclear core, a white-brightness for this moment at least untainted by anything else, it irradiates the whole room, perfect incandescence, more light than Sherlock’s seen from him since before he went away, it leaves him more breathless than spending minutes with a cock in his mouth has, as gratifying as anything John could do to him… _

John lets himself slide slowly down the wall onto the bottom of the tub with Sherlock. Sherlock’s body is on fire now, but still he waits. He won’t ask a thing of John, no matter the cost. John reaches out, touching his face, tucking back his soaking curls and then leaning in to kiss his cheeks, his nose, at last his mouth, vigorously and thoroughly.

“Sherlock,” John whispers in his ear.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want you.”

“You have me. What do you—”

John shakes his head and repeats urgently. “I  _ want _ you. I need to feel you again, all of you.”

_ Sherlock hadn’t let himself think that John might want him again in that way, even after all he’d said tonight, it seems too intimate, too final, too dangerously close to not being able to turn back for a man in John’s place, but he does want it, and so does Sherlock even if it will make giving him up again even worse, he’ll rip himself open for John Watson and leave everything inside him, even if John decides not to keep him… _

Sherlock feels a shuddering chill shoot through him, even in the steamy bathroom. He nods his assent and they scramble together out of the shower, drying themselves quickly before stumbling to the bed. John sinks down on the pillows, pulling Sherlock on top of him. Sherlock straddles his thighs, luxuriating in the feel of John Watson beneath him once more. John arches up against him and Sherlock bends down to kiss him, to ravish John’s entire torso with his mouth. John cries out softly, but freely now, no longer trying to contain it, as Sherlock grinds himself against John’s pelvis, sucking on one of John’s nipples.

“Sherlock,” John gasps and the sound of his name on the lips of this man, writhing in passion under him, is too much. He fumbles for the drawer of the side table, from which he is grateful to have never thought to remove certain items, and produces a small, not-quite empty, bottle.

“Do you want me to—”

“No, no, just… go slow. But be quick about it.”

Sherlock slicks himself thoroughly, impatient too, and then teases John’s legs apart, pushing his knees up toward his chest. He rubs some of the lubricant around the tight ring of muscle, warm to his touch and promising a furnace within. He eases himself on top of John again, holding himself up with hands on either side of John’s shoulders. He hesitates, for just a moment, and then John’s legs are around him, drawing him close.

He presses his tip just barely at John’s entrance, and John pushes back, letting him in just slightly. He looks up at Sherlock, his face set with determination or desire or maybe something else, Sherlock can’t tell. He wraps his legs more tightly around Sherlock, demanding, and Sherlock obeys, pushing in slowly, but insistently, sinking deeper and deeper into John as his own pressure grows harder and harder to control.

_ John is still glowing, red now, not with anger, like in the engine of a steamship, powerful, unstoppable, ravenous, he’s so tight, so perfectly fitted to Sherlock in every possible way, it’s like being reborn into a world of fire, it’s going to leave marks on him even if it does ever go out… _

At last Sherlock is buried in John, to the hilt. But it doesn’t feel like that, it feels like their flesh has melted together, irrevocably. Sherlock begins to move inside of John, feeling him rock back in kind. John lets out deep but quiet little moans in time to Sherlock’s thrusting and Sherlock finds himself responding with soft, almost involuntary, grunts of his own, their voices working in unison even as their bodies do. Sherlock won’t last much longer, and he slows purposefully, to draw it out, to make sure he fully takes in every detail of this moment.

_ John quivering under him, around him, hands clutching at his his back, legs hooked over his thighs, completely open to Sherlock, hair plastered to his skull, throat bared, out of his head finally as he so wanted to be, hips undulating and strong muscles squeezing Sherlock, strong as the rest of him as always been... _

Sherlock lowers himself so his nose is touching John’s and whispers his name, over and over, as the pleasure swells and overcomes him, his orgasm cresting against John and John’s body welcoming it, arcing up and holding Sherlock still within him. As Sherlock comes he kisses John deeply, twining tongues together, getting as completely inside of him as it’s possible to be all at the same time and never wanting to crawl back out. He quakes from the release as it leaves him, slowly coming back to himself from that perfect moment of complete oneness.

Sherlock’s body starts to feel like jelly, and he feels John go soft beneath him as well. It’s hard to think, he just wants to lie here, on top of John, inside of John, and never move again. He musters the willpower to disentangle them, slipping gently from his friend and rolling over on his back, trying to catch both breath and thoughts. He feels strangely vulnerable, like he’s the one who’s just been breached and exposed.

John is still and quiet beside him, for too long, and Sherlock thinks for moment he’s made a terrible mistake. John is shaking slightly, and Sherlock realises that he is crying, silently but with force. It’s disconcerting to have tears follow intimacy like this. He tenses.

“John, did I…”

John rolls over to face him, wiping his eyes. “No, Sherlock, God no. You were…that was very good.”

_ The highest praise John can give him and he laps it up… _

Sherlock allows himself to relax a little, but even in the afterglow he feels the anxiety of wondering what John will do with him now.

John smiles at him, still with sad eyes, and runs a finger up along Sherlock’s stubbled cheek and around the angry cut on his brow. “You’re in rough shape.”

Sherlock doesn’t argue. The drugs, their fight, the withdrawal have taken a toll and he knows the fact that he’s still not bothered to shave tells John volumes about his state of mind.

“I understand why you think you did it this time. And the time before that. And the time before that,” John tells him, frowning. “But you will kill yourself like this.”

“I know,” Sherlock says. “But—”

John shakes his head, violently. “No. I get it, but no. You don’t get to do this anymore – you’re too indebted. No more. Not ever.”

Sherlock bows his head. “Yes, John,” he says meekly. “I promise.”

_ So many promises, spoken and unspoken, between them, all of them broken, mostly by him or in a response to him, but yet they still feel bound together by a deeper promise... _

He wants to ask what now but realises he has to wait. But John knows him.

“Impatient git,” he says and Sherlock feels a rush of happiness at the affectionate insult, for an instant everything is perfect again. But John’s eyes stay sad and Sherlock can feel him withdrawing. He reaches for John, but the other man sits up, facing away from Sherlock and drawing the sheet around himself.  

“I’m not… I’m not ready,” he says quietly. “That was… you were what I needed. It made things…better. Or at least not so bad. Not so lonely. Thank you. But I’m not ready. And I don’t know when, if, I’ll ever be ready. Everything is so different now. I’m not the man I was, I’ve lost all those tender places in myself, and I think they might never come back. Parts of me have gone cold that might never thaw. I can’t just hop back into bed with you and fix everything, however wonderful that just was. I’m not even sure I know how to be me at all anymore, nevermind how to be an us. Maybe that makes me a terrible person, using you like this. I’m sorry.”

_ It’s no more and no less than John had offered him at the start but it still hurts, partially because he knows it’s true, partially because John should never say such things about himself, should never apologise for what just happened, for using him in any way because being used by John Watson is the privilege of his life, and it hurts because what if this really was the last time, what if there’s really nothing more he can do… _

What Sherlock says is, “I’m not.”

John’s tension eases just the tiniest bit and it looks for a moment like he might say something else, but instead checks his phone for the time. 

“Alright,” he says after an awkward pause. “We’d better get going. I promised Molly we’d meet her and the others to celebrate your birthday in half an hour.”

_ John had engineered an end point, an exit strategy from the beginning, he’d been afraid he’d want to stay but thought he shouldn’t, is that good or bad, hard to say, but at least John isn’t booting him out of his life forever… _

Sherlock closes his eyes to compose himself, to force himself into a casual, friendly headspace in which had he had not just left his heart, soul, and spirit inside his friend without any promise of their return and then says, with slightly brittle sarcasm, “Is nothing sacred?” and gets out of bed to pull himself together.

John makes a move like he wants to touch him again but instead just nods curtly and they get dressed and ready to go out in companionable, if uncomfortable, silence. John seems to be slipping back into sadness and Sherlock starts feeling helpless again.

_ Guilty, John still feels guilty, for the texting, probably now for being with Sherlock, no matter what he’d told himself to make it allowable in his mind, to excuse his need as anything other than additional infidelity, and guilty for anything else his brain can latch onto to blame himself for… _

As they get their coats Sherlock makes a last-ditch effort to ease John’s mind. He can’t tell how well it works, if John can be convinced to forgive himself. But it seems to help.

_ Why did he tell John about texting the Woman, even just to chat, to let her flirt at him, to feel less alone in the world, that’s definitely Not Good and more than a bit, at least from where John sits, or at least sat when she could make John see red with jealousy... _

But when he puts on the hat it makes John smile, a real smile. A smile that lights him up from the inside like the Milky Way. And even if it doesn’t last, it’s enough for Sherlock to believe that John’s safe for now. And Sherlock’s going to keep him that way. 


	5. Chapter 5

That turns out to be more difficult than anticipated.

_ Does he or John attract more chaos and disaster, might be an interesting experiment one day, either way it’s undeniable that when they're together they have very little chance of getting through a week without something erupting around them, although Sherlock has to admit that this one is squarely on his side of the equation… _

The upside of the revelation that Sherlock has a sadistic and homicidal sister who’s been locked away for the last thirty years and whom he does not remember is that there is very little time to worry about what will happen with John. That is, basically, the only upside. 

Well, that and John working with him again as a full partner, loyally at his side without reserve. And having an excuse to dramatically terrify his brother in pursuit of the truth. And the small, pleased smile John gives him when Sherlock insists to Mycroft that John is family. And the fact that for only the second time in his life, Sherlock is able to lure Mycroft into field work. Actually compared to all that, being blown up in his own flat is really only a minor inconvenience. 

_ At this point he’s shocked and horrified by what’s been kept from him, but aside from the odd flashback it’s not real, it’s still something to be found out, a perhaps a personal sort of case but a case nonetheless, he’s more curious than anything and aware that he’ll be able to hold this over Mycroft for years, and there’s plans and scenarios to be worked out and, despite everything, working with both his brother and John holds some level of satisfaction he’s not prepared to plumb the depths of at the moment, but essentially it’s all still abstract... _

Once they get to Sherrinford, this diabolical island prison of his brother’s devising, it becomes anything but abstract. It becomes appallingly, harrowingly real, coming into focus suddenly, sharp as a razor and inescapable. Eurus, the coming east wind, blowing through his life this whole time, steering him always, inevitably to this place.

He’s always wondered what he’d become if he ever let the darkness take over. Now he has context for it. His sister, terrible, beautiful, bright but not like John is bright, diamonds on a saw blade bright, ready to cut through living muscle and bone. She drops them like toys into the world she’s created, able to build more complex scenarios in five minutes than most people could in a lifetime, despite being madder than the cumulative population of Broadmoor. 

It’s designed to strip the humanity from them. It’s designed to strip him, him specifically, down to the barest element of being, slicing him thin as a sample for a microscope slide so she can hold him up to the light and see what he’s made of. Killing half a dozen people just to elicit the emotional reactions she can’t possibly understand from him is nothing in the face of this goal. And maneuvering Moriarty around the chessboard of Sherlock’s existence to see how much he could take, how cleverly he could escape had been a minor exertion for her at best. 

_ The only reason any of them make it out intact is that John is there, John is magnificent, only becoming stronger, better, more compassionate in a situation designed to bring out the worst in all of them, John makes them all be better, John makes them all be soldiers, and once again, John suffers for it... _

Sherlock comes too close to losing, to being unable, once again, to work out her puzzle. He almost lets John die. He almost fails him once again, in the most final of ways.

The man Sherlock had been when he’d met John couldn’t have done it. The man he’d been before Eurus and Moriarty had tried to take John from him couldn’t have done it. It’s only now, after he’s learned what it’s like to be desperate, to be lonely, to mourn, to lose everything and to be lost without someone, that he can understand what it is that she needs, what, under all her cold cruelty, her native inhumanity, she has been silently screaming for all these years.

_ Not long ago he would have dismissed with derision the notion that simply not being alone, that the mere fact of someone caring enough to fight their way past your defences and lodge themselves stubbornly in your heart could be a form of salvation, but he knows better now...  _

Sherlock reaches her just in time, as John is drowning and she is crumbling into her own delirium. At his pleading, Eurus stops the water and then seems to ebb back into herself, like the tide going out slowly. Sherlock, uncertain, holds her while he waits for the authorities. He tries to hold her as he, very distantly, remembers Mummy holding him as a child. He wonders if anyone has ever held Eurus before or if his parents had been too frightened of her, even when she was very small. She is thin and light in his arms, but her eyes are his eyes. 

She’s talking quietly to herself now, in that eerie child’s voice and he can’t make out the words. He hopes he’s getting through. He had done, at least enough to save John. He’d got her message and was doing the best he could with it, even decades too late. She is more like him, he thinks, than either are like Mycroft - there’s no touch of the madness, of the wild, erratic, emotional streak they both possess in very different quantities, in their brother. Maybe Sherlock can help her, now that he knows her, now that she knows he’s there. 

_ It’s confusing to say the least, he wants to strangle her, not metaphorically, literally choke the life out of her and she would deserve it and the world would be safer for it, but he also wants to protect her, if only from herself... _

And then, without warning she lunges, clawing at his face, hissing and spitting like an animal and he has to pin her arms to her side. She’s stronger than she has a right to be but he just manages to keep ahold of her and after a moment she stops struggling. He doesn’t relax his grip, but his heart pricks at the arbitrariness of a universe in which it is her and not he who was pulled under by the dark current, to never surface. 

_ He’s not as smart, but it still could have been him, just as easily… _

By the time the security forces come she is neither talking or attacking. She’s just blank. Something tells him she’s going to stay that way for a long time. 

“Don’t hurt her,” he says weakly as they take her away, with enough artillery to subdue a small army. She goes with them calmly and does not look back at him. 

 

One of Lestrade's people drives them back to London in a heavily armoured SUV. It's a long drive and it's already late. They sit in silence and Sherlock's thoughts swirl, adrenaline and exhaustion and confusion threatening to overheat a mind that has already been working on overdrive for a couple of days. He thinks of the past, of a dead friend he can still barely remember, but mostly he thinks of love.

_ For so long he'd rejected the concept entirely and when he'd finally understood it, he'd moved John into that category but no one else, now he understands it better than ever and fears it and the power it holds even more, but can't deny it, not after today, he find himself in a world of love, a sea of it, as though once he acknowledged it even a single time it grew and poured out around him... _

First there's John, completely constant and unwavering even now, after everything Sherlock has done to him. Even if they are never together again the way he hopes for, he understands now that they will never be truly apart and that John still loves him, has always done. Even when Sherlock refused it, punished him for it. And if there’s one thing that Eurus’ twisted nightmare of experiments and pain showed him in total clarity, in case he or anyone else had any doubts left regarding it, is that he loves John more than anyone or anything in this life. 

Mycroft, colder than Sherlock could ever be and not a brave man, but loving him enough to willingly die, not even to save Sherlock’s life but so that he wouldn't have to lose John or choose between his brother and his friend. Molly Hooper, who loves him hopelessly and irrevocably, who he keeps hurting and hurt today perhaps the most of all, but who keeps saving his life somehow, no matter how terrible he is and how little he deserves it. Mary, who had sacrificed her life, out of a kind of love he still doesn’t understand.

And Eurus.

_ The most vicious motivator indeed, he doesn't want to think of her, but she fills his head now, this lost sister, this unseen malignant force in his life so desperate for his love and attention that she orchestrated or initiated nearly all the worst and darkest moments of his life without his knowing she even existed, who threatened and hurt everyone who ever meant anything to him and countless others because they were in the way, who tore his chest open and filleted his heart to try to extract the love from him, yet he somehow finds it is there anyway, past the rage and past even the pity for this mad, repugnant creature, a strange sort of compassion for her, for the agonising cage her own mind must be, a thousand times worse than his own, he should hate her, he should want to hurt her after everything she put him through, put them all through, what she’s cost him for years and decades, but he doesn’t and he doesn’t understand why he doesn’t and they’d eaten chips in the rain together and she’d told him he was nice... _

Suddenly he feels a hand in his and all the scattered, bewildering thoughts dissolve into a soft, steady light, into one thought.

_ John... _

He glances over at his friend, who looks drawn and exhausted but also strangely resolute. John says nothing but doesn't let go of his hand the whole way back to Baker Street. When Sherlock exits the car, John follows and comes upstairs with him to the threshold of the ruined flat, the air still acrid and reeking of explosives and scorched paper. 

Sherlock had no expectation that John would come inside with him, but his relief now that he has is so intense as to makes him physically weak. The thought of letting John out of his sight, of going to back to separate homes and separate lives after nearly losing each other again and again churns his stomach and makes him light-headed with fear. He's gripped with the sudden dread that John might just be walking him to the door and turns to him. 

_ He just wants John to stay, to keep his eyes on him for a little longer, just to be certain, after today just being able to see him whole is precious, just not having to be parted from him tonight would be enough... _

"John... I know you said you needed time, but--"

John cuts him off with a motion. He takes Sherlock's hand again in the darkened hallway and deliberately lifts it to his mouth, brushing his lips tenderly against the delicate inside of Sherlock's right wrist and then holding them there and looking Sherlock directly in the eyes.  

"I think we've wasted enough time, don't you?" John says this very evenly, but there is fever in his touch and his eyes have a predatory glint to them.  

Sherlock swallows and realises he is shaking - from fatigue, from sustained tension, from need. John leads him into the flat with single-minded purpose and Sherlock allows himself to be led, as if in a dream. They carefully skirt around the crater that was most of the sitting room and part of the kitchen, hole covered with a tarp, windows and outer wall boarded, dust and debris coating everything. 

The bedroom is the least damaged, although there’s still a mess of rubble and piles of miscellaneous belongings stacked to try and preserve them. The internal walls have cracks in them and, as the power is out, it would be almost totally dark if it weren’t for John’s steady, unwavering brightness.

Sherlock stands a few feet away, still uncertain. “You look like…” he trails off, not sure if this is allowed but frantic to tell him. 

But John just waits, looking expectant. 

“A pillar of fire in the desert,” Sherlock finishes, hesitantly, thoughts swirling again, remembering the last time he told John what he looked like and how long ago that seems now. 

Then John crashes into him like the Hindenburg and all other thoughts are vapourised on impact. 

_ It’s like being surrounded by an electrical storm, like kissing lightning and feeling it race through his nerves, spark his synapses, ricochet around his skull and accumulate there until he wonders if he’ll ever form a coherent thought ever again and then stops wondering because he can’t… _

They were together only about a week ago, but now that feels like another life, a distant memory. And it had been something totally different than this. It had been about John’s grief, about Sherlock’s repentance, about comfort and forgiveness and healing. Even when it had been passionate, intimate, it had also been temporary and unequal. An oasis they had both known they were going to leave. Not a reunion. A memorial.  

But this, this is the distillation of nearly four years of bodily separation, breaking like dam. There was a time they had desperately, greedily, inevitably taken each other after every dangerous encounter, every hazardous case, working out their fear and adrenaline on each other, drawn to each other like rare earth magnets. They had used their bodies to reaffirm each other, reaffirm that they were alive and together and unharmed, fucking with abandon until they were each spent and reassured that the other was still there, still safe, still whole. The greater the danger, the more volatile the reaction between them. 

Now they have both gone years without that reassurance, spent time apart and grieving, lost more, been hurt more than most people are in a lifetime. They’ve worked dozens of cases that could have ended either of their lives with no more chance to reconnect afterwards than a few words, a firm clap on the shoulder. The horror of the past day and a half is concentrated jet fuel, catalysing the accumulated need into an inferno.

_ And all the things they can’t say to each other because English and all other human languages are wholly inadequate to encompass them, because the words would be meaningless without this physical expression anyway, they can write in each other’s bodies, read in each other’s movements, explain through pleasure and pain and desire and relief, promise to each other and seal those promises in flesh and bone and fluid... _

John is ferocious and powerful, such a change from the last time they had been together that it would take Sherlock’s breath away, if John slamming him into the wall next to the bed hadn’t already done so. Plaster dust rains down on them from the impact but Sherlock ignores it. John is holding him against the wall with one hand on his chest and his pelvis trapping Sherlock’s thighs, legs planted firmly to keep him in place.

He tears at the buttons on Sherlock’s shirt with his other hand, biting into Sherlock’s shoulder hard enough to draw blood, ravenous. Sherlock throws his head back, revelling in the assault, in John whole and healthy and strong, needing him, hungry for him. John’s full, masculine strength  awakens Sherlock’s and his exhaustion evaporates into purified desire. He pushes back up against John, urgency intensified by John’s unbridled, visceral lust.

John grabs his jaw with iron hands, forcing Sherlock’s head back down and planting a crushing kiss on him. He bears his hips down hard, grinding his unyielding erection into Sherlock’s femur. Sherlock makes a harsh, throaty sound, unable to stand it anymore, and manages to hook a foot around John’s ankle, throwing him off balance. John drags Sherlock down to the floor with him and they tumble over each other, fighting for dominance and rending each other’s clothes.

_ Sherlock never ceases to be in awe of John’s rugged durability, his pure power and tenacity, his physical might, concealed so well in a small, ordinary package that no one would ever guess was capable of such relentless, dogged pursuit, of such brilliant and excellent violence, of such pristine and unadulterated passion, and especially not all of those at the same time… _

John wins the struggle as the last shred of fabric in Sherlock’s pants gives out and Sherlock finds himself on his belly on the hard, dusty floor, naked with John kneeling between his thighs, one hand twisted achingly in his hair and the other pressing his shoulder down into the wooden boards. Losing suits Sherlock more than fine this time and he makes a dark noise of pleasure and encouragement. He doesn’t want to wait or go slow this time, he wants to be taken and John wants to take him. 

_ He’s missed this meeting as equals, this clash of virile drive, feeling John’s soldier’s strength and deadly potency, his sincere and enthusiastic desire, the warmth and light of him, hearty and real and fully present, he was afraid John might never be this way again, that he might never recover, that they might never recover themselves and each other, but he’s not afraid anymore, not of anything… _

Instead of mounting him as expected, with one last lovely, excruciating tug on his hair, John rolls Sherlock half on his side, sliding one arm underneath him and wrapping it around his chest and the other burning into Sherlock’s hip. Sherlock bucks back against John, eager, and then is forcibly held still for a sublime, quivering moment of anticipation that is nearly as good as fulfillment.

Then John, impatient and lubricated only with his own saliva and the precious fluid from his arousal, plunges himself into Sherlock suddenly, painfully, gloriously. It’s like being run through with hot, glowing, untempered steel that is melting into bliss inside of him, filling his veins and arteries with pure, refined John Watson.

John wastes no time, holding him tightly with his lips pressed between Sherlock’s shoulder blades and his right arm hooked over Sherlock’s thigh for leverage. He thrusts, slowly but powerfully at first, and then faster as Sherlock begins to move with him, picking up John’s tempo as easily as his favorite Mozart concerto, like they have never been apart. They rut together roughly, quickly, vaulting towards the final crescendo as if nothing can be quite right until then. 

_ How can anything ever have been right without this... _

The feeling of his friend, flesh and blood, hot and thick, moving inside of him again at last makes him feel alive, real, human, in a way he so rarely comprehends. It completely overwhelms his consciousness, inundating his senses and leaving him unable even to cry out. John’s fingernails dig into Sherlock’s sternum and he feels John’s teeth, John’s hot breath on the back of his neck. John’s soft sounds of exertion echo in his ears and he smells the residue of brackish water and the dried, bitter odour of fear and adrenaline on him, now overlain by clean sweat and lust.

John shifts, wrapping his right hand around Sherlock’s cock and pushing three fingers of his left between Sherlock’s lips. Sherlock takes them gladly, thankful to have something to do with his mouth. John tastes of salt and limestone and longing. Sherlock bites down at the knuckles, working his tongue between and around John’s cherished, skillful digits and sucking on them voraciously as John begins to pull him off in time to their rhythm. 

_ John knows how to perfectly modulate his grip, read Sherlock’s mounting climax in each twitch and spasm and change in hardness in his hands to bring them off at the same time, a rare skill he clearly hasn’t forgotten and it’s delightful, though completely unnecessary this time, and really Sherlock would be satisfied with nothing more than being filled to brim by him, illuminated from the inside like a salt lamp, a thing of cold, dead stone without its power source… _

They are as close as it is possible for two human beings to get, intermingled, as if trying to undo the years of separation with force of will. Sherlock can feel John’s body as if it was his own, and perhaps it is, the scalding heat of it igniting even Sherlock’s frozen core until they are both burning up from the inside out.  

Sherlock feels John’s hand tighten suddenly around him, in just the right spot to catapult him over the edge right as John surges deep within him, exploding like gunfire in his abdomen, searing through his body like ionized solar plasma and incinerating what little is left of his cognitive functions. Sherlock can’t see for the supernova behind his eyes, blinding him with an unmitigated radiance so strong it feels like physical pressure. 

John breathes heavy and ragged behind him, gasping for oxygen and then stills. He fits his chin to the crook of Sherlock’s neck, roughness of his unshaven cheek on Sherlock’s soft skin, and they stay like that for long moments. Sherlock lets all the air go from of his body, senses blown out, faculties obliterated, and only able to perceive the pure, nebulous light emanating from their joined bodies and the regular, reassuring beating of John’s heart, pulsing against and within him.

_ He never wants to move again, anything else can only be less perfect than this, can only take him farther away from John, the source of all goodness and light inside of him and possibly in the world… _

Eventually, though John gently pulls away and Sherlock rolls over to face him. John’s grinning, a grin that crinkles his eyes and illuminates his face from the inside out. Sherlock is not quite capable of speech yet, unsure how to express the happiness but also the resurging need he is feeling already, the fear that has come creeping back as soon as they are physically parted that perhaps this isn’t real, perhaps it’s about to end, perhaps one or both of them didn’t really make it out of there today. 

But John knows, and he feels it too. John puts his forehead to Sherlock’s for a long moment and then whispers hoarsely with a devilish glint in his eye, “Again?”

In answer, Sherlock flips him on his back and pins his arms to the floor. 

It takes two more wild, brutal rounds, plus one quick, sloppy one in the shower, before the two famished men have fully slaked their desire on and in each other in every imaginable way. They are both all over scrapes and bruises, unsatisfied until all the ones from their ordeal are covered and redeemed by ones they’ve left on each other. 

If the flat had not already been virtually destroyed they would have done a pretty good job at it. What was left of the kitchen table is smashed, Sherlock’s bed has gone from being slightly splintered to definitively busted, and John has managed to put a hole in the already-weakened wall between the kitchen and the sitting room by the simple expediency of trying to fuck Sherlock through it and unexpectedly succeeding.

At last, finally assured of each other’s realness, devotion, and wholeness and having communicated everything possible in that peculiar dialect, they lie across what’s left of Sherlock’s bed in blissful silence. The left side is significantly higher than the right and the mattress is askew from the base, but neither cares. At this point they are the only clean things in the entire flat and John looks pink and vibrant, if very tired. 

Though deeply comforted and satisfied, now that they’re out of the immediate moment Sherlock finds himself strangely shy around John again. He’s spent so much time unlearning the habits of presumptive affection, of training himself not to touch, not to possess, that he feels strangely hesitant to assume he is permitted to do so now, that all is mended.  

_ Their sex had felt like it had before the fracture, better even, it had seemed like that was what John wanted, but that was beforehand, does it really mean the same to John as it does to him, now, afterwards, he doesn’t want to ask and break the moment, risk hearing a no, but he doesn’t know how long he can take waiting... _

With more boldness than he feels, he lightly rests a hand on John’s bare waist. When this is not rejected, he indulges himself further by running his fingers through John’s silvered hair. He’s wearing it longer now on the top and styled in a way that, for some reason, Sherlock finds utterly irresistible. It beams with a gentle phosphorescence around his fingers, like moonlight. 

John shifts a little closer, encouraging. “Not as young as I was,” he says ruefully, breaking the silence.

In answer Sherlock puts his lips to John’s temple and nuzzles at his hair, letting out a satisfied sigh. 

John chuckles. “Well, I’m glad you like it at least.” 

Then Sherlock feels him go serious. He pulls back so he can look into John’s eyes, nervous of what he’s going to say. 

John takes a deep breath. “Sherlock… I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Before, I spent a lot of time trying to place the blame for Mary’s death on you. And I’ve realised something I haven’t wanted to face. I loved Mary, I did. But she didn’t throw herself in front of a bullet because she cared about you. She didn’t even do it out of instinct, because she was a good person. She had a husband and infant child to think of. 

“No, like everything else she did, she made a calculation. Maybe it was a calculation she had made a long time ago. But she knew me better than anyone, better than maybe even you. And at some point she realized which one of the two of you was more necessary to my existence. And she made it her business to make sure that person stuck around no matter the cost.”

_ Like Mycroft ready to take a bullet for John, to spare Sherlock, Mary had spared John in her way, the only way she could... _

John pauses. “She wasn’t wrong, Sherlock. To my shame, she wasn’t. She loved me more than I loved her, and I have to live with that.”

He falls silent, contemplating something Sherlock can’t quite fathom, but strokes a finger along the curve of Sherlock’s hip as he thinks. 

Sherlock asks carefully after a minute, “What…what does that mean?”

John shakes it off and focuses again. “It means if I throw this away out of guilt, out of some misplaced loyalty to her memory, then I throw away her gift to me. To you. To us. And I won’t do that. Not anymore. Do you understand?”

“I’m not sure…” Sherlock answers, not quite daring to believe what he thinks John is telling him even though it’s exactly what he’s been hoping for since the day they were first parted. “Do you mean that we… that you might be mine again? That you… want… me?”

John smiles a slightly sad smile and tenderly brushes a curl off Sherlock’s forehead. “I always wanted you, Sherlock. And deep down, beyond everything, I was always yours. Even if everyone knew it but me.

“And today made me realise I don't want to let another day, another moment go by," he continues earnestly. "I won't risk it. Not again. I never should have. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you wait, that I couldn’t just accept what you were offering the way you were able to give it.”

Sherlock shakes his head, hating that once again John is the one apologising to him. He’s no good at apologies but tries anyway. 

“I hurt you...I didn’t want to.”

It feels so inadequate but John seems to understand. He looks up at Sherlock and for the first time in a long time his eyes are clear and free of pain, of grief, of fear. “We hurt each other. We will again, one way or another. What’s left to lose?”

_ So much, everything, everything he never knew he’d cared about until it was nearly gone, but that’s not what John means, nothing can be worse than being apart and knowing they can still lose each other anyway, separation doesn’t dull the pain of potential loss, just adds regret… _

Sherlock is speechless, overwhelmed and John can see it. He smiles fondly at Sherlock and kisses his lips gently. “Mine,” he whispers. “You mysterious force, darkest of dark gravities.” 

Sherlock feels himself relax totally and fully for the first time since he had jumped off the hospital rooftop. “Mine,” he whispers back, ferociously. 

“Yes,” John agrees. “Yours, you ridiculous maniac.”

“It’s that simple?”

John laughs, with a hard edge to it. “If you call anything about the past four years simple. But I think… we’ve both earned it and we both need it. I don’t think I can be John Watson without Sherlock Holmes anymore, and I’m sure I don’t want to try. 

“But,” he holds a hand up in warning. “It won’t be the same. I’m not sure what it will be, but so much as happened, we’ve both changed. I’ve got Rosie to think about, my practice…we can’t expect everything to be as it was when we started out. Back then we had nothing and no one else in the world, nothing to worry about but each other. We had never hurt each other. It’s going to be different.”

Sherlock nods earnestly, ready to agree to anything if it means they can get on with their life finally. “I know. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

John smiles easily and kisses him again, deeply this time and despite what they’ve just said it does feel like the first time, in the sunshine on the sofa in the sitting room, full of promise and yearning. Sherlock moves to climb on top of him, wanting to explain that to him, but John stops him with a firm hand on his chest, laughing gently to take the sting out of the rejection.

“Nightmare! I’m sorry, I literally can’t. In fact, I’m not sure I can get off this bed unassisted at this point, thanks to you. There will be time, I promise. But for now I haven’t slept in two days and I need to pick up Rosie in… about four hours. Sleep with me until then?”

Sherlock, feeling this is nearly as good, nods his assent, spooning himself around John and trying to get as comfortable as possible in the broken bed. John makes a deep noise of contentment, pulling Sherlock’s arms tighter around himself, and is asleep almost instantly. Sherlock does not close his eyes for the rest of the night, half convinced if he does John will vanish.

_ Half convinced none of this is real, that it’s a story his mind has invented to protect him from some awful truth, from a reality in which John is dead or hates him or they are all still in Eurus’ labyrinth, being drawn deeper into the centre of destruction, but no, John is breathing deeply against his chest, they smell of each other’s sweat and pleasure, the livid bruise on his shoulder from John’s teeth throbs with heat, this is real... _

In the morning John leaves to retrieve his daughter with the promise he will be back the next day, and he is. They spend a long time talking, mostly about Sherrinford, going back through their and Sherlock’s history trying to connect the dots to Eurus, to Moriarty, trying to make some kind of sense out of it. And they spend a longer time not talking and continuing to make up for lost time. 

Sherlock can hardly believe that John is his again. 

But not all his. 


	6. Chapter 6

John was right, it isn’t the same. It’s wonderful, and far more happiness than Sherlock knows he has a right to, but it is different. John has his work and his daughter, his own home. He rarely spends the night anymore and although when they are together they fall into comfortingly familiar patterns, that time is never enough.  Sherlock, and their cases, are a part of his life, a large part, but not the entirety of it and Sherlock forces down the urge to demand to be.

_He can feel John bracing for it, expecting him to ask, require more than John can give, he’s got to prove to John that he doesn’t have to be that way anymore, that he can accept there’s more to John’s life than him, still, it feels more like two people who are dating, how he hates that word, than it does being together in the way he understands it, but maybe that’s what it has to be right now, maybe this is what it’s like for normal people..._

Sherlock’s life is different too, although there are some changes he won’t accept. He bristles at the mere suggestion from Mrs. Hudson and John that it might make more sense to take the insurance company’s offer to total 221 Baker Street for the cash than to try to repair the damage. He offers up his own funds to put everything back exactly the way it was and refuses to move out while the work is being done, kipping on a camp bed in the lab upstairs, which suffered only superficial blast damage.

But now he spends time with Eurus, seeing to her well-being despite her imprisonment, advocating for her even though she can’t or won’t acknowledge him. She does seem to understand he’s there at least. He plays the violin for her and eventually she does respond. It’s the only means they have to communicate and her only comfort. If she can even experience comfort. John is clearly sceptical and a little afraid of this development given what she has put them through, but says nothing, not wanting to discourage this light-years leap forward in Sherlock’s emotional growth.  

_He cannot hate her, that would be like hating himself, he searches for glimpses of understanding in her eyes, looks for echoes of himself in her movements and sometimes finds them, simultaneously regrets and is grateful he doesn’t remember more of her..._

He spends more time with Mycroft as well, his deep anger at his brother’s actions giving way to at least a semblance of understanding his choices now. Their relationship is no less acrimonious on the surface, but for Sherlock’s part there is less venom behind his sarcasm and he is less resistant to helping Mycroft, at least with those tasks he deems worthy and not mere political manipulations. He fears he is a poor substitute for their brilliant sister, if a less dangerous one.

The darkness inside him, while not gone by any means, is much quieter than he can ever remember it being, not silent by any means but no longer yawning and screaming at him ceaselessly, demanding to be fed either by work, drugs, or his life. He is, of course, still restless, impatient, and easily bored. He still often hurts and constantly annoys those closest to him. But the oppressive fear, the urgency, the feeling that if he stops he will be consumed from the inside out, is kept at bay for one of only a very few times in his life.

_It’s certainly better than anything he thought he’d have when he was growing up, in his life before John, in his life since Moriarty, better than he could possibly deserve or express, and if there is darkness, if his brain still whirls with demands for input, for the universe to be figured out and broken down into facts and numbers, at least he’s not alone in it, at least he’s tethered to someone who will always find him no matter what..._

But even after a couple of months something continues to haunt him. One day, while John is away visiting Harry, who Sherlock will still not abide, Sherlock finds himself buying a train ticket to Northumberland.

_He'd had no conscious thought of doing this, he tries not to think about the long Sherrinford nightmare even as he tends to this broken sister of his as well as he can, tries to move on and separate those things in this mind, have what life with John he can at last free of the influence he never knew was there, but it nags at him, keeps him up at night..._

He can't talk to John about it. Not much genuinely disturbs the man and not for long, but when he was pulled out of that well, holding those tiny bones, his face was like nothing Sherlock had ever seen on him. Sherlock won't take John back to that moment no matter how much he needs to make sense of it. And John can’t tell him any more about it than he already knows. Only one person might be able to.

Victor Trevor is more than a little surprised when Sherlock fetches up on the doorstep of Corvin Castle late that night, totally unannounced and damp through from the fog. He handles it with aplomb, as he would do even if it were a less welcome visitor than his old friend.

Victor embraces Sherlock immediately, but with carefully modulated reserve, and his only question is, "Dear Lord, did you _walk_ from the station? It's miles, and freezing out there."

"Needed to clear my head," Sherlock says, offering no other explanation. "May I stay the night?"

Victor nods and, not wanting to wake the housekeeper, makes up a room for Sherlock and says goodnight, making a credible effort to conceal his curiosity.

_Victor’s kindness knows no bounds, Sherlock appreciates kindness now in a way he hasn’t before, appreciates those who care for him, appreciates how much he puts them through, how much he fails as a friend, how much he's excused that failure by claiming he has no friends and needs no one, and maybe this new appreciation doesn't make him any better at being a friend but it must count for something..._

Sherlock doesn't sleep but there's an undeniable influence to the quiet and solitude of the place that allows him to relax more than he'd like to admit. Victor continues to not ask questions over breakfast the next morning, instead keeping up an inconsequential but not unpleasant patter about the neighbors, his projects, his historical research. Sherlock suspects he could probably spontaneously move into the castle without explanation and stay for several years, and Victor would still act as if he thought nothing of it unless Sherlock brought it up first.

When he's done eating Victor stands and says. "I've got to do some work to do with the bees - time to split up the colony. I promised Susie and Cora a starter hive. Would you like to help me?"

Sherlock is certain that's not true, or at least it hadn't been what Victor had been planning for this morning, but follows him down, glad for a occupation to focus on. It's still chilly and the bees are sluggish. They work in silence for a few minutes before Sherlock decides there's no point in delaying any longer.  Keeping his eyes on his task, he sketches out the story as briefly and dispassionately as he can manage.

_He's not told anyone who hadn't been there, except for the police and even then John did most of the filling in for him, it's hard to talk about, still too big to fully process, but easier once he gets started, easier in this beautiful, remote place in the daylight where he might be very well talking about a nightmare he had once..._

When he's done Victor looks stunned and pale. He makes a little motion like he wants to reach out to Sherlock but aborts it.

"You're saying," he says slowly, like he can't quite believe what he's heard. "That when you were a child you had a friend - a best friend - with the same name as me, with red hair like mine, and that your...very troubled...six-year-old sister killed him and then was locked away permanently. But you had no conscious memory of this, of either of them, for years?"

Sherlock nods curtly. "Obviously the buried memories were not deleted and continued to influence me without my knowing. Perhaps that's why I was drawn to you upon our meeting."

Victor grimaces. "So you think if I'd been Victor Smith with the brown hair you'd have taken no notice, just passed me by?"

Sherlock realises belatedly that what he said may have been hurtful, but Victor puts a hand up to stop him backtracking.

"No, it's fine, I know what you meant. It's all just so awful, and must be quite a shock for you as well.. I'm terribly sorry." He looks as if he wants to say more but holds back, knowing Sherlock won't thank him for an effusive display. After a moment he asks. "Do you remember it all now?"

"Just fragments." Sherlock frowns. "Enough to understand why my mind tried to protect me from it."

_A flash of a memory, a dark room in the house, pain, confusion, laughter but not his..._

Something in his face causes Victor to give into his affectionate impulses and he puts a hand on Sherlock's arm. It’s surprisingly grounding.

"I don't know what to say. Thank you for telling me. Are you going to be all right?"

Sherlock doesn’t answer, having no frame of reference for what “all right” might be.

“It’s not your fault, you know.”

“I don’t think it’s my--” Sherlock begins, but stops as Victor looks sincerely at him with clear blue eyes.

“She did it because she was jealous of you, of your attention, it sounds like. But that doesn’t make it your fault. You couldn’t have stopped her. You were a child and she was… obviously very ill. You couldn’t have known, about that or about what she would do later.”

Sherlock takes that in for a moment, strangely relieved, and inclines his head in thanks. "I hesitate to bring up a subject that may be painful for you as well, but do you know where your father got the name Trevor from?"

"You're looking for a connexion?"

"Yes."

_He doesn't know why he feels compelled, it hardly matters at this point, but perhaps the whole thing will make more sense if he can find a link, create some meaning or at least an explanation, he hates coincidences, maybe he’s hoping to hear that they got it all wrong and this Victor is the Victor of his childhood, safe and sound, or maybe the whole thing is just an excuse to talk to someone about it..._

Victor's expression flickers like he's trying to master some emotion, but returns quickly to normal. "I'm sorry Sherlock, I have no idea. It may have been a family name, or maybe he just met someone with that name or read it in a book. It’s not uncommon. I never had a chance to ask and I'm not sure I wanted to know at the time in any case."

Sherlock frowns. "But you kept it, even after you found out the truth about your father?"

Victor shrugs. "It's not like I particularly wanted to take his real name after all that, and 'Trevor' is easier to spell than 'Virvirkhvist'. I'm sorry I can't help you find out more about your friend though."

"I did think of contacting his immediate family after his remains were... returned to them. But I fear contact with me might only add to their distress."

Victor looks sharply at him, assessing. "You've changed," he says after a long pause. "You never used to think like that. John's influence?"

Sherlock bites back the impulse to respond defensively that he has not changed, but he knows it's true.

_He was never quite as cold as he pretended to be, either to himself or others, but he so often didn't understand, couldn't sympathise, couldn't see past his own goals or needs, couldn't comprehend why others were so easily hurt by the truth, still doesn't more often than not, but after the years away and the separation from John and the ordeal with Eurus there are new places in him that he doesn't understand but compel him to at least attempt empathy more than he used to, even if he’s not very good at it..._

Instead he agrees reluctantly. "Partially. Well, mostly. A lot has happened."

Victor accepts this without further comment and Sherlock changes the subject, overloaded on emotional introspection for the time being.

"And you? Any prospects on that front?"

Victor looks confused, then startled. "Romance? No. I'm not even sure where I'd start at this point."

"Yes, you're physically attractive, wealthy, not entirely dim-witted, and you own your own castle." Sherlock says dryly. "What dregs of the earth would be interested in you?"

"It's not that simple."

_How could it not be, for someone like Victor everything was simple, at least when it came to people, if Sherlock had managed it, albeit not without some hiccoughs, Victor certainly should be able to..._

"Well, what about that cook's son? The one who looks like he just walked out of a Gieves & Hawkes catalog?" Sherlock gestures in the general direction of the garden, where a strapping young man is building a new trellis.

Victor looks scandalised. "Justin? I've known him since he was twelve!"

"And he's what now, 21?"

"Twenty-two. I'm nearly twice his age. And he works for me, at least while he's still deciding on a graduate programme. It wouldn't be appropriate."

"Don't tell me you haven't thought about it," Sherlock says sternly.

_Even Sherlock had thought about it, a stray, meaningless thought for half a second, not that he’s actually interested in anything but John, but neither is he blind..._

"I most certainly have not. And anyway, I'm sure he'd prefer someone of his own age. In fact, I don't even think he--"

"He does," Sherlock interrupts firmly. That much had been easy to deduce. "And in any case, I’ve found the young, educated set these days are less hung up on gender. It's rather fascinating."

Victor appears thoughtful for a moment but then shakes his head. "No. Bad idea."

"Why? Haven't you seen how he looks at you? He worships you."

Victor preens without even realising, but continues to protest. "As an uncle or an older brother or something like that."

Sherlock rolls his eyes. "I know my childhood was hardly typical, but I'm fairly certain I was never quite _that_ fascinated with Mycroft's arse… Look, did you ever make inappropriate overtures to him while he was underage?" he demands.

"Sherlock! Of course not."

"Did you pay for his schooling and university in the hopes of getting in his trousers or with the expectation of any favours in return?"

"No!"

"Well, then, I don't see the problem. But you'll have to make the first move, he's far too in awe of you."

Victor falls silent, at least willing to take the argument under advisement. Then his eyes narrow at Sherlock.

"Are you just trying to get me partnered out of some misplaced, conflated guilt regarding your childhood friend and what happened between you and I years ago?"

"No," Sherlock says quickly. Then, quieter. "Possibly. Does that make any of my points less valid?"

_He doesn’t feel guilty for Victor, not this Victor, not really, but he does feel responsible on some level, and if anyone deserves a chance at some semblance of a happy ending..._

Victor doesn't reply and Sherlock sighs.

"If you are really content as you are, happier on your own, then by all means continue this way. There are many advantages to it. But if not, if there is some fear or belief that is stopping you from pursuing something you truly want..." he trails off, uncomfortable with this level of intimacy, even with Victor. He clears his throat.

"I was alone for many years. And then for a brief time I wasn't. And then I made some choices I thought were good ones and I lost that, for years, and I thought I would never have it again. Don't waste a chance at something good, something you really want if there's any possibility you will regret it because time is so short and some chances never come again--"

Sherlock breaks off, appalled at himself for speaking so, but Victor looks so serious he resists the urge say something smart to cover the moment.

They finish work on the hives by noon and Sherlock agrees to stay one more night, but excuses himself to his room for the afternoon to do some work. The sun has come out and it's grown warm, and from his place in the east turret he has a fine view of the gardens below and the cliffs overlooking the sea.

He has a fine view too when, later in the afternoon, Victor strides purposefully into the garden clutching a glass of cold ginger beer like a shield. He offers to it Justin, who is still working on the rose trellis and sweating from the sun and the labour. Like watching a silent movie, Sherlock sees Victor's trembling hand brush Justin's as he hands him the drink, so brief it might have been an accident, and Justin look surprised, then thoughtful, then pleased. He motions for Victor to come sit in the shade with him.

Sherlock smiles to himself and turns away.

_Sometimes it only takes the tiniest thing to change two lives..._

He’d decided to leave early in the morning, planning on sneaking out without disturbing the household. But to his surprise Victor, an inveterate late sleeper, is awake and insists on tea and toast and driving Sherlock to the station himself.

“You’re up early,” Sherlock comments as Victor pours him a second cup of tea.

“I...ah… didn’t sleep much last night. Or at all, really.”

Sherlock raises an eyebrow.

“Don’t be lewd. I just had a lot on my mind.”

“Such as?” Sherlock asks, a bemused smile playing on his lips.

“Such as if my cook decides she’s going to poison me because of all this, I’m coming after you,” Victor snaps, but without rancor.

Sherlock sips his tea smugly and says nothing.

At the station Victor sees him to the platform and forces a bone-cracking hug on him that Sherlock doesn’t really mind.

“Thank you,” Victor says, warmly. “Really. And you should take your own advice.”

“Pardon?” Sherlock furrows his brow.

“About taking a chance on what you really want.”

“I don’t--” Sherlock begins but Victor is already walking away.

He mulls over Victors cryptic comment all the way home and for several days after. It’s true, he wants more from John, but maybe more is impossible in this stage of their lives, after all they’ve put each other though. They are friends and lovers. They belong to each other. He shouldn’t complain just because John isn’t perpetually within arms’ reach, that Sherlock isn’t the sole focus of his existence.

What right has he to ask more of John after all of this? What more can John even give him? And what can he offer John in return? It’s already so much more than he thought he would ever have again.

_He’s worked so hard to not be all-consuming, to not require every scrap of attention, every ounce of loyalty and second of time that John has, he knows it can’t work that way this time, and trying to make it work that way could result in losing John again, forever, but moderation is not in his nature, how do you moderate something so vital to your existence, like being asked to ration air or water, far better than none at all but you’ll never feel truly free or satisfied either..._

It takes him nearly a week to come to a conclusion and then a little longer to arrange things after that. Fear strings him out like a live wire the entirety of that time, fear that in asking for what he wants he will lose everything. Still, the advice he’d given Victor was what he believed, and now he feels no choice but to act accordingly with it.

Sherlock paces anxiously as he waits for John to come over. He's not at all sure he's done the right thing, that his gesture will be accepted for what it's meant to be. He can’t tell if the new boundaries between them are natural outgrowths of the changes since they were last together or if John has placed them there intentionally and is unwilling to alter them.

John arrives, flustered and out of breath, with the baby and her many associated belongings. He hasn't brought Rosie to the flat much since Mary died. Sherlock's not sure what that means. Does John not want her around him? Or perhaps he thinks Sherlock doesn’t want to see her or be bothered. He knows John must need the help. He was certainly desperate for a hand today, and the timing is perfect.

"Sherlock, are you sure about this?" John asks, nervously. His eyes are bloodshot - she’s been teething.

"I've watched Rosie before and we both managed to survive the experience," Sherlock points out.

"Right. Well, she wasn't mobile then. She's into everything now, and she's like some kind of demon speed crawler. One second turned away and God knows what she'd get her paws on in this place." He scans the sitting room, searching for any potentially toxic substances.

"John, I am not nearly so oblivious as you give me credit for. I can keep a human child alive unsupervised for a few hours. All the experiments have gone in the kitchen, the kitchen door is locked, and you'll be back before tea."

John relaxes and hands Rosie to him, smiling as Sherlock holds her, still awkwardly. "Well, I've brought the travel cot if you need her contained and she'll be down for her nap in an hour..."  

It's only reluctantly that Sherlock gets him out the door in time to get to his consult.

  


Sherlock is upstairs when John comes back, calling for Rosie.

"Up here," Sherlock says as quietly as he can manage and still be heard down the stairs.

"In the lab?" John curses, bounding up the stairs. "Sherlock, I told you to keep her away from--"

"Shh," Sherlock hushes him, holding open the door to what once, a million years ago, had been John's bedroom. He taps his fingers nervously on his thigh as John enters. He's done his research, but he's still not sure he's gotten it at all right.

He watches as John surveys the space. Gone are the shelves and the hood and the lab bench John had put in as a gift to him when he'd given up his room. There's no trace of human or animal remains, except for some fancifully taxidermied bunny rabbits in hats, and the only poisons left to be seen are those depicted in the colorful mobile hanging over the beautifully carved wooden cot - family heirloom, wrested from Mycroft by physical force - in which Rosie is sleeping.

John's hand flies to his mouth to keep from exclaiming and waking her. The whole room has been transformed. Aside from the cot and gentle, indirect lighting there is a toy chest, filled with soft toys shaped like Sherlock's favorite microbes and a science kit Sherlock only now realizes is massively age-inappropriate.

One wall is given over to a giant mural of the periodic table. There's a sand and water table where the lab bench used to be. And in the far corner a low bookshelf is filled with every educational children's book the woman at the bookshop had wanted to sell him, as well as quite a few advanced texts. Most children's books are rubbish.

John takes it all in silently, for long enough that Sherlock begins to worry in earnest. He can't read John's expression and isn't sure if his touch would be welcome.

When John finally turns back to look at Sherlock, his face is a battlefield of emotions and his aura is riotously coloured. "Sherlock..." he trails off.

Sherlock starts to babble. "John, I'm sorry if I’ve... overstepped. I wasn't sure how to ask you. Or tell you. I thought I'd better show you instead. I know you need space and you're worried about Rosie, but I want... I was hoping... I mean, I understand that things can't be what they were before but I want you to know that I want whatever it is that it can be, as much you want it to be."

"You turned your lab into a nursery." John seems to have fallen a little behind.

"Yes."

"You turned your lab, the lab I made for you, into a room for my daughter."

"Yes?" Sherlock says uncertainly. "That is all right, isn't it? You don't have to... I mean if you don't want to, it's fine. She'll have a place here for whenever you do want..."

John realises Sherlock cannot possibly articulate what he's asking for, and moves closer to him, putting his arms loosely around Sherlock's slender waist as he does when he knows Sherlock is unsure.

"You're asking me - us - to move in."

_It's a ridiculous idea, Sherlock can see that now, how could he have possibly thought that John would want to live here with him again, move his daughter in with an unstable sociopath, they have a house now, with space and light and a garden, they don't need a dingy flat full of dangerous chemicals that's been blown up at least twice since he's been there…_

He feels foolish and tries to pull away.

But John holds on to him and instead of ridiculing him just beams. It gives Sherlock hope. He gives it another go.

"I know children aren't really my area and that you want Rosie to have a normal childhood. But I want to try, John. I want you back, for real, not for just sometimes, and Rosie's part of you and I want her here too. I'll try to be better, I promise, whatever you want me to do. I want... I want to be a family." He stumbles over the word but forges on. "With you. And Rosie. If you want."

After a pause that feels like an eternity, John says, "Of course. Of course I want that. I've always wanted that." His voice is thick with emotion. He looks around again as he collects himself.

"Is it... did I do it right?" Sherlock asks hesitantly as John surveys the slightly macabre décor.

John's eyes linger on the little duvet covering his daughter and Sherlock realises he's just noticed the anatomy-themed linens, but then he chuckles. "What the hell, yes, you did it perfectly. And fuck normal childhoods. What matters is having parents who love them. And... each other..."

It's John's turn to be tentative now. He shouldn't be, he's just given the whole world to Sherlock and Sherlock can hardly believe it.

"Yes, John," he echoes. "And each other."

John grins and pulls Sherlock's head down to kiss him. And suddenly, for the first time in years, Sherlock feels like the world is right again. Like he's home.

John breaks away after a moment and narrows his eyes in suspicion. “I got an offer on the practice this week. Cash, twice what it’s worth, anonymously through a law firm. That was you, right?”

Sherlock is abashed, but only a little. “Well, you’ve been stretched so thin, temporally and financially. I just thought you might appreciate the option to focus on Rosie for a while… and casework.”

John smacks him on the bicep. “Arrogant narcissist. You still can’t tolerate sharing me, can you?”

“That one’s redundant. And I believe I warned you at the outset, John. Besides I think I should be congratulated for making a rather large exception for your offspring.”

John snorts. “Well. You did warn me at that. And if you’re offering, actually, that would be kind of a relief. I haven’t had a break since before… well, you know. Rosie’s growing so fast and there’s never enough time. But I’m not giving up medicine entirely. And you aren’t allowed to act like it’s a disposable hobby I’m just doing for lack of anything better. If I have patients, I have patients and casework - and you - will wait.”

"Yes, John," Sherlock says obediently, not suppressing a smile.  

John glances back at Rosie's small, still form. "She'll be asleep for awhile," he says, whispering again. He takes Sherlock's hand and leads him out, closing the door behind them. Halfway to Sherlock’s bedroom - their bedroom, again, at last - he turns and looks at Sherlock severely. "But you have to be quiet, okay?"

He is quiet. They are both quiet, and eager and gentle with each other. Much gentler than usual. The late afternoon sun warms and brightens the room until Sherlock cannot tell what is coming from outside and what is coming from John. They go slowly, drinking in each other’s bodies, all traces of uncertainty or hurry at last banished. There is a sense that, for once, they have an abundance of time.

_Time to run his fingers over John’s lips, memorising the shape of them, time for John to spend what feels like an eternity tracing every single one of Sherlock’s vertebrae with his tongue, time for them to spend infinite leisurely moments stroking and fondling and re-learning each other, coaxing soft murmurs of gratification and louder cries of rapture from each other and taking satisfaction in each other’s pleasure..._

There’s a strange feeling of purity to their lovemaking, a sort of innocence rarely captured in intimacy under any circumstances, much less by two people who have been through as many hells as Sherlock and John have. It feels like a holy act, like the consecration and consummation of everything they've been through together. Like being bound together in a way that's deeper, more earned, than it was before. A rebirth into a new life created solely for them, together.

_Sherlock's only god is science, but if he had a religion right now it would be John Watson, in his bed, in his life, knowing John will never leave it again and that he will worship at the altar of John’s body until the end of his days..._

When at last they are finished, satiated with each other, John rolls off of Sherlock and sprawls languorously on his back on the bed. Sherlock settles on his side next to him, watching his chest rise and fall as he tries to get his wind back. Sherlock sighs contentedly, for the first time in a long time not anxious or fearful about John or what is going to happen to them.

John smiles at the sound. "Now," he says, stretching luxuriantly. "Before the baby wakes up and you discover _exactly_ what it is you've gotten yourself into..."

"Yes?"

He throws his arms wide, expansively, on the bed and commands, "Sherlock Holmes, tell me you love me!"

"What, now?" Sherlock is somewhat alarmed. He's come to terms with the concept, but saying it quite so frankly was another matter. It seems almost licentious.

John laughs at him. "You've used the word in proximity to me twice in all the time we've known each other, you recalcitrant twit, and neither time said it _properly_ to me. It's hardly excessive."

He does have a point there. Sherlock lets out a longsuffering sigh and sits up, pulling John with him. John dutifully mirrors Sherlock’s solemn expression, but with an indulgent twinkle in his eye.

_This is why he hates saying it, has always hated it, the words themselves are weak, meaningless, misrepresentations of the depth of the place in his heart in which he holds John, saying them out loud is a criminal understatement, but now he understands why they matter and he won’t deny John that out of pride any longer, even if all the things he’s just spent the past hour doing to John are a better representation than mere words could ever be..._

“John Watson,” he says, swallowing hard and trying to put into his tone even a fraction of the intensity and ardour that should accompany such a declaration. “I love you. And I will continue to do so until the heat death of the universe.”

John’s expression melts into softness.

_And it’s all floating lanterns and sunrises and the molten core of the earth contained within John’s eyes, John is every bright thing in the galaxy curled up in his sheets, the perfect centre at the heart of creation, and Sherlock’s very own star to keep him in orbit all of his days…_

“I love you, too,” John says, grinning with what can only be described as sparkling, dazzling, radiant joy. He puts Sherlock’s hands to his mouth and kisses them reverently. “Absolute fucking nightmare.”

 

The End. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you ScopesMonkey and OhDearieMe for edits, comments, and Britpicks. Thank you all, my darlings, for sticking with me through this long and twisty tale and supporting me. I never thought I would write two novels' worth of Sherlock fic nor that anyone would keep reading it, but it's been an amazing, fulfilling experience. I will miss this Sherlock and John and their universe, and I will miss working in this fandom. But this series has given me so much confidence and I hope now to go out and make my own universes and see where they take me.
> 
> Writing for you all has been my privilege, you lovely, wild, delightful creatures.


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